


Fifty Shades of Gold

by beethechange



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: And Associated Breathplay, Demeaning Dirty Talk, Extremely Not Tinsworth, File Under: Bits that Go Too Far, M/M, Pre-Negotiated Kink, Roleplay, Rough Oral Sex, Vague and Unspecific Criminality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:58:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21617569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beethechange/pseuds/beethechange
Summary: Shane tires of doing the same bits over and over. He tires of telling the same stories until they all, him and Ryan and the fans, have every beat memorized. Whenever Ryan pulls out his Ricky Goldsworth impression,ah yes, that old chestnut, Shane plays along only begrudgingly. He’s bored.That’s his official position: he’s over Ricky Goldsworth.Shane’sunofficialposition, regrettably, is that he’d rather beunderRicky Goldsworth.
Relationships: Ryan Bergara/Shane Madej
Comments: 108
Kudos: 738





	Fifty Shades of Gold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [whitachi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitachi/gifts).

> For whitachi, who approached me to ask for a fic that takes [the Ricky Goldsworth bit](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5jMc_woIpTAli15tlCKvMj6RdbCfKD9Z) as seriously as Ryan does. Which is to say: not very. My endless gratitude to Catt and Eva for the betas.
> 
> There’s some kink in this one, specifically rough oral sex in a roleplay scenario, so heed the tags and feel free to drop me a line in the comments if you want more details before you read. Everything is pre-negotiated and consensual, but I don’t spend much time on the negotiations because I don’t find it very interesting to write. 
> 
> The Charleston jail scene was written back in August, well before we discovered they actually filmed at the jail and saw the footage, so it diverges a lot from what actually happened there. You can tell because in my version the only full-bodied apparition is in Shane’s pants.
> 
> so anyway here’s wonderwall

*

**_Who is Ricky Goldsworth?_ **

*

Shane’s over the Ricky Goldsworth thing.

He thinks it’s a solid bit, rendered tedious by the repetition of it. He’ll tell anyone who asks that he thought it was funny too, once. He laughed along with everyone else, watching Ryan fumble around trying to embody some hardass criminal mastermind. Those who know Ryan know it couldn’t be further than the truth.

Shane played along happily, in fact, until Ryan ran the joke into the ground. The fans latched onto it, as they do, and Ryan—craving positive attention, always so easy for a laugh—latched onto their enthusiasm, and it was all downhill from there. Shane tires of doing the same bits over and over. He tires of telling the same stories until they all, him and Ryan and the fans, have every beat memorized.

Now whenever Ryan pulls out his Ricky Goldsworth impression, _ah yes, that old chestnut_, Shane plays along only begrudgingly. He’s bored. That’s his official position: he’s over Ricky Goldsworth. 

Shane’s _unofficial_ position, regrettably, is that he’d rather be _under_ Ricky Goldsworth. 

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a bit._ **

The first time it happens—and by _it_, Shane means stamping his first-class one-way ticket to Inappropriate Boner City, which is itself a suburb of the larger metropolitan area of You’re Totally Getting Fired—is during the filming of the Room 1046 postmortem.

It’s September 2, 2017. Later, looking back, he’ll categorize it as G-Day, the first day Ryan went full Goldsworth, but at the time it’s just another shitty Monday morning, too much to do before lunch and not enough coffee to do it.

Things are already weird because Ryan’s brother Jake has joined them for the PM. Shane likes Jake, truly, but he’s never seen a human being who’s worse on camera. Ryan’s energy is off because he’s trying to be two different people. On the one hand there’s Unsolved Ryan, the bratty younger sibling to Shane’s world-weary older one, and then there’s Ryan-the-older-brother, helping Jake get his lav mic on and lecturing him about not mumbling.

Still, it’s chugging along fine until they read a viewer question about whether they’d ever see Ricky Goldsworth again and Shane’s life goes off the rails.

“All I know is that, uh, Ricky Goldsworth may come back,” Ryan says, tapping his hands palms-down on the table. He shoots Shane a look askance. “Just don’t make him angry.”

“What—would we like him when he’s angry?” Shane asks. He gets a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach, like drinking something fizzy and chugging hot sauce at the same time. Pleasure and pain, together. He can’t begin to say why.

Ryan’s voice goes low and brutal and mean. “Why don’t you stop asking me questions?”

It could have died there, one of a thousand bits they pick up for an ep or two and then let fall away. It might’ve been over before it even starts, except Shane opens his mouth and speaks into being the premise that will haunt him for two full years: “You may be possessed by the spirit of Ricky Goldsworth.” 

It feels a little like that part in Jurassic Park where they reboot the power while the kid’s climbing the giant electric fence: red lights flashing, warning sirens wailing, people on the ground screaming _jump off the fence, Timmy_, and still Shane can’t jump. He can only wait for the shock to reach him, and be thrown off by the surge of it.

“Nah, I’m not possessed,” Ryan says, laughing artificially to set up the joke, and then, to Shane, in Ricky’s sharp hiss: “_Shut up_.”

Shane’s whole brain goes offline with a spray of metaphorical sparks. All systems down. Then with a flicker he starts to come back online limb by limb, system by system, and when he arrives back to his body again his pants are too tight.

“Just an awkward air right now,” Shane says, dimly aware that he is still on camera and will therefore be expected to contribute to the conversation, inappropriate pants situation or no. “Ricky Goldsworth puts everybody on edge.”

“That’s the way I like it,” Ryan-as-Ricky says, straight into the camera. And then he turns to look at Shane, confrontational and snarling. Shane looks away, because he’s afraid if he looks back he’ll blush or say something stupid or, God forbid, lick his lips or some shit, and the vibe will get even stranger.

Shane spends the rest of the PM trying to keep his cool. It’s not easy getting through the Hot Daga; narrating a hot dog joust and a hot dog meet-cute is weirdly counter-intuitive to talking down an erection, which Shane attributes to the phallic nature of hot dogs.

“That’s a fun bit,” Ryan says to him as they’re packing up, after. “The Goldsworth thing. Gonna have to bring that back.”

“Ah ha ha,” Shane says, speaking the laugh as opposed to actually laughing. He sounds like the fucking Count from Sesame Street. “Yep. That’s…good stuff.”

“We should think of a backstory for him or something. Do you think he’s, like, a mob guy? Maybe on the run from the cops?”

Shane can tell Ryan’s in a brainstorming mood; he’ll want to go get lunch and spend the whole time spitballing about Ricky fucking Goldsworth. Shane’s not about to sit there workshopping this when he’s got an aberrant hard-on that won’t quit and, frankly, a lot more questions than answers.

“Yeah, maybe,” Shane says, distracted. “Hey, I’ve got a thing this afternoon I need to go prepare for. Catch you later?”

They go their separate ways, and Shane very slowly eats a yogurt and two entire apples and recites the alphabet backwards three times, and when Ryan gets back from lunch everything is fine and normal and _fine_. It’s only a bit, and sometimes bits get a little out of hand, and that’s—it’s fine.

It’s all fine.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a confidence man._ **

It’s definitely not about _Ryan_, Shane tells himself the next time it happens.

At the worst, the _very_ worst, it’s about Ricky—and more likely it’s just the most uncomfortable way in the world to discover a new kink for being ordered around. It’s a little strange, yeah, but life is a rich tapestry and human sexuality is complex and Shane can live with that. And maybe it means he’s got a more than passing interest in dudes, and he can work with that too.

The Ryan of it all is incidental.

A few months go by, and Shane forgets about it the whole thing until they’re filming the William Desmond Taylor ep the following February. Or at least he pretends to have forgotten; more accurately he’s compartmentalized it so thoroughly that his conscious mind doesn’t realize what his dick’s been cooking up until it’s too late.

They’re doing their usual back-and-forth and the conversation comes around to aliases and secret identities. It’s stupid—Shane’s got a hundred pop culture references he could have picked, but he doesn’t. Instead he says, off-hand, distracted, “You could move to a new town. Tell ‘em ye—uh, ‘Hi there, my name is, uh…Ricky Goldsworth.”

Shane regrets it immediately. He doesn’t know why this stupid character’s so in his head already, how he’s burrowed somewhere deep in Shane’s id and made himself perfectly at home without invitation.

“Ricky Goldsworth,” Ryan agrees, pleased at the callback. There’s no graceful way out now. Shane will have to go all the way in, and sell it enough that Ryan won’t suspect he’s having the _wrong_ kind of fun with it.

“You know, if you ever get tired of doing this you can just move to a new town, tell ‘em your name is Ricky Goldsworth, you’re done. You’re set for life!”

“Yeah, I’d tell them that,” Ryan says, and then something in his face and his posture transitions. When he speaks again, his voice is different too, quiet but firm. He makes eye contact with Shane, telegraphing that he’s going to improvise: _keep up, big guy_. Then he slips into the scene. “I want the top house, I want the top room—”

“No, sir, you can’t just move into a town and—and_ take a house_.”

Shane regrets the _sir_, a little bit. He regrets how much he likes it, how nice his mouth feels forming the word. He regrets the little glint of Ryan’s teeth that says he likes to hear it, even if only because it means Shane’s coming along for the improvisational ride.

Ryan’s still talking, and Shane has to force himself to pay attention.

“—and I want servants as well, I want butlers, and you’re gonna be one of ‘em.”

“Sir, you can’t—I’m not going to be a b—I’m the _mayor_, sir.”

“Your outfit’s in my car. I’ll expect you at my house later, eight am. Leave the keys under the mat.”

Shane closes his eyes, so briefly it might as well be an extra-long blink. No one can know what he’s seeing behind his eyelids: himself, on his knees, in some ridiculous uniform, polishing more than just the silver. Some kind of fucked up Downton Abbey upstairs-downstairs sex nightmare.

He assumes it’s as much the novelty factor as anything. As a tall white guy, he doesn’t get told what to do very often. People simply don’t make demands of him outright. They ask; they suggest; they _hint_. Even Ryan, when they’re shooting, doesn’t give orders—the show’s a collaborative process from start to finish, and when he says “Shut up, Shane,” it’s with that weary, exasperated tone that comes with no expectation of follow-through.

Ricky, though: when Ricky tells Shane to do something, it’s an order. He _means_ it. When it happens, something in Shane urges him to comply before he’s even had a chance to think about it.

“Yes sir, Mr. Goldsworth,” he says, deferential. Joking, but also not joking. He’s hard again, absolutely rock hard in his chinos, and that’s mortifying even though he knows no one can see it. He feels hot all over, from his toes to the tips of his ears.

Ryan makes a pleased noise, somewhere between a groan and a sigh, like Shane’s dad after a huge Thanksgiving dinner. He slaps the desk between them once in satisfaction, no doubt already making mental notes about how to edit and score this segment for maximum effect.

“What a story!” Shane says, trying to bring it back around, ready to pull Ryan out of character so this secret, private humiliation can end. Ryan stares back at him, eyes shiny, smile frozen. For a moment Shane can’t read him. “Gold—Goldsworth,” he stammers. “He’s really coming into his own.”

Ryan looks him up and down, unimpressed. “You talking to me?”

Shane barely recognizes him, he’s so still and strange. Then Ryan meets Shane’s eye, and whatever expression he finds there makes him unable to keep a straight face. The tension of the moment breaks like a wave around them both, soaking Shane in relief and disappointment.

“Jesus Christ,” Shane wheezes. Ryan scratches his nose and grins, the cat that ate the fucking canary. Off to the side, Devon’s shaking her head, smiling too.

“Oh, that’s fun,” Ryan says when they take five to square up for the next take, clenching his hands into fists and then flexing them out again. “My hands are all tingly.”

Shane is also fairly tingly. He wonders if losing feeling in your feet entirely is a little-known symptom of extreme arousal. He soldiers on.

“Is Ricky Goldsworth a con man, then? Do we have our origin story?”

Ryan thinks about it, tapping his pen against his teeth. “Yeah, I think maybe he’s like Leonardo DiCaprio’s character in Catch Me If You Can, but meaner.”

“With a penchant for eminent domain and indentured servitude.”

“I bet he makes them all wear sexy maid uniforms,” Ryan says, wiggling his fingers as if touching imaginary ruffles. “Even the butler.” 

The day the William Desmond Taylor episode airs the following month, Shane leaves work to find a feather duster stuck under the windshield wipers of his car. The feathers are bright pink. Shane can’t tell if it’s a costume prop for some French maid costume, left over from Halloween, or the kind of thing they’d sell at a cheesy sex shop off the interstate.

He texts Ryan: _Ha ha, very good. Key’s under the mat._

Ryan just texts back a winky face, which, great. Now Shane gets to spend the whole weekend wondering what the fuck _that_ means—and why he cares so very, very much.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a gangster._ **

Okay. So it’s a little bit about Ryan.

Or maybe more accurately it’s about the dichotomy between the guy Shane knows so well and the man he can’t begin to predict—the gulf between well-worn affection and the exciting unknown. It keeps Shane on his toes, poised for the jump scare.

Ryan’s got a lot of great qualities, but confidence isn’t one of them. He’s okay at faking it, when he has to, but deep down he doesn’t believe in himself as much as Shane thinks he ought to. That’s what’s so unique about the Goldsworth performance. It’s so ruthlessly wicked, so effortlessly proficient, that Shane can’t help but admire it even when it makes his life impossible.

That’s the special sauce about Ricky, Shane is finally forced to admit—the particular combination of cocksure and competent. It’s rare—it’s _special_—to get to see Ryan shed his thick outer layer of self-consciousness. When he does it especially for Shane, half-mischief and half-mean, that bright-eyed _dare_ of a grin, Shane’s gone for it.

Shane can manage when it’s during filming, when there’s a nice big desk or table to hide behind and an easy way to compartmentalize it all. When Ryan blurs the lines, bringing Ricky Goldsworth out to play in their real off-camera life, it’s harder for Shane to deny how much the contrast is integral to the appeal.

It’s early October, 2018. Ryan comes into the office one day smiling big. On his way to his desk he takes the long way around, swinging by Shane’s to knock on it with his knuckles.

Shane looks up from his computer. “What’s up?”

“I finally figured out my costume for the work Halloween party,” Ryan says. “You’re gonna like it. It’s Unsolved-related, so I thought I’d ask if you wanted to, like—if you wanted to dress up too. With me.”

“What, like a couples costume?” Shane asks. “I didn’t know we were there yet. I’m touched.”

Ryan gifts him with an eyeroll and a laugh. “Could be fun. We could ‘gram it for the fans, they’d eat it up with a spoon.”

Shane doesn’t even bother to wonder what the costume in question might be. He’s already got a costume in the works, and he has for months, so he gives Ryan the brush-off. “I’m actually sort of already working on something, sorry, man.”

Ryan shrugs, not looking particularly hurt. “Thought I’d check.”

“What’s the idea?” Shane asks, almost as an afterthought.

“Too late, you lost your chance,” Ryan says. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Shane doesn’t think another thing about it until the night of the party. Buzzfeed always goes all-out for holiday parties, particularly Halloween and Christmas. It’s easy to wave off the rumors about tightening budgets and grumbling investors when they still spend unseemly amounts of money on the cosmetic shit.

This one’s on the rooftop of the L.P. Los Angeles, and it must have cost a pretty penny. Shane grabs a drink and settles in, finding a couch where he’ll have a prime view of the sunset as it sinks over the Hollywood hills. Finally it’s starting to pass for crisp in the evenings, although Shane still misses the full-blown autumns back home.

“When you said you were being a cowboy this month I didn’t know you meant literally. You’ve been playing Red Dead way too much.”

Shane turns around and spies Ryan leaning against a large potted topiary. “Save a horse,” he tells Ryan. “And so on and so forth. Besides, I already had most of the costume from shooting Tombstone.”

Shane eyes Ryan up and down, trying to work out his costume in return. Ryan’s wearing a suit, black and white pinstripes with a vest and an odd, old-fashioned cut. He’s got those black and white penguin shoes and, to the misfortune of all, a black fedora. It’s vaguely 1920s, but of nicer quality than your average Party City costume.

“You look like you’re out to assassinate Jay Gatsby,” Shane says. “What are you supposed to be, a gangster? A bootlegger? Are you packing?”

“To the left,” Ryan says with a sharky smile. “Like always. Hey, didn’t he already die at the end?”

“I meant a gun, idiot. I’m surprised you stayed awake long enough in tenth grade English to make it to the end.”

Ryan slides in next to him. It’s a rather small couch, Shane thinks.

“Saw the Baz Luhrmann movie. Nah, I don’t need a gun, I use my hands. Seriously, guess who I am.”

Shane laughs, but he’s strangely uneasy with these twin lines of conversation. He adjusts his own hat, the one he bought in Tombstone that actually fits his head, bringing it low over his forehead. He slumps back in his seat and wishes he had a piece of hay to chew on or something.

“You’re Al Capone.”

“That wimp? Couldn’t even do tax fraud properly. No way.”

“John Dillinger?”

“Come on. What self-respecting professional criminal gets arrested in Ohio?”

He’s holding himself strangely, Shane thinks. Ryan’s not a big dude, but right now he looks big, and not just because suits always fit him a little tight on the arms. It’s his energy that’s big, aggressive—he’s sitting forward on the couch, legs spread, taking up as much space as he wants.

“Lucky Luciano?”

“Nothing lucky about me, baby.”

Shane’s all out of famous gangsters, which is ironic because they’ve probably done about eight True Crime eps about them. “Give me a hint.”

Ryan leans in, forcing Shane to lean back and cede more space or be uncomfortably close. The smile on his face shifts again, spreading like a fine layer of first frost. It fixes into place, chilly, like nothing nice will ever grow under it again.

“If you haven’t guessed it by now, you’re slower than I thought you were. Which is saying something.”

It’s that caustic smile that makes it click for Shane, not the insult.

“Oh,” he says, his heart sinking into his stomach, “howdy, Ricky.”

“Howdy yourself, cowboy,” Ryan says, and something about the way he says _cowboy_ makes Shane want to go find a lonely patch of dirt, dig in a nice big hole, bury himself in it, and wait for death. Ryan clinks his glass to Shane’s and drinks. When Shane drinks too, it tastes sour in his mouth, strange—and then he realizes it’s the adrenaline. “Nice chaps, by the way.”

“I thought Goldsworth was a garden variety grifter,” Shane says, ignoring the dubious compliment. “I thought he just went around bullying prominent local government officials out of hearth and home. I didn’t realize he also had a bootlegging empire as a side hustle.”

Ryan gives him a little dig in the ribs with his elbow, taking over even more of the couch. “The old Ricky can’t come to the phone right now. I’m trying something new. It’s—he’s a work in progress. I’m trying to let the character choose his own path.”

“Couldn’t find a good costume for the other one, huh?”

“No!” Ryan barks a short laugh, slapping his leg. “Too bad. I was gonna make you wear a little frilly French maid uniform, assuming I could find one to fit a giraffe.”

Shane’s not sure if it’s the frilly costume part or the _make you_ part, but he can feel his cheeks warming. He hopes Ryan will chalk it up to the booze, if he notices at all.

Ryan slides back into character. Here’s another thing Shane’s started to pick up about Ricky Goldsworth: no matter the iteration, Ryan always plays him as a horrible flirt. Ryan as Ricky embodies a loose-limbed, devil-may-care, overtly sexual energy. He sits like a guy who wants you to notice his dick, and he looks at you like a guy who’s noticed yours.

And he always looks hungry, as if he’s going to help himself and eat his fill.

He sprawls out now, tossing his feet into Shane’s lap so he can spread the full length of the little couch.

“Get your dirty shoes off me,” Shane says.

“No.”

Ryan quirks an eyebrow at him, daring Shane to move him. Shane doesn’t. Instead, his hand falls to Ryan’s ankle. Feeling something odd, he lets his hand drift higher up Ryan’s calf, finding the top of his sock through his pants.

“Are you wearing _sock garters_?”

Ryan waggles his eyebrows again. “Sure am. I’d show you, but we’re in mixed company. Thought they were a classy touch. All the fanciest cats wore ‘em, and Ricky’s not some buttonman.”

It’s upsettingly, excruciatingly sexy.

Shane opens his mouth to tell Ryan he should _absolutely_ take his pants off, but he thinks better of it at the last possible moment.

Instead, he asks, “So you suggested we dress up together. What was my costume going to be, if not the little French maid outfit?”

“I thought you could be a private dick who’s got me on the run. Your guy C.C. Tinsley, or whatever. But I guess if you didn’t like that you could just be my moll.”

“Moll?”

“Sure. You know. My dame. Get you a little flapper dress, a strand of pearls, maybe a wig in a black bob. Not that there’s a woman’s wig in the universe that would cover that noggin.”

“So many of your costume ideas involve putting me in women’s clothing,” Shane says mildly. “I wonder what that means.”

“It means Ricky likes ‘em pretty.”

He fixes Shane with a bold stare that makes Shane’s toes curl involuntarily in his shoes.

Shane could—he could say something. He could point out that Ryan’s being stupidly flirtatious, his head tipped back against the couch at a rakish angle, his feet in Shane’s lap, saying shit like that. But then he’d have to admit that he’s _noticed_, that it’s having an effect on him.

“I think it means you need to get a girlfriend so you can embroil her in your mad costume schemes instead,” Shane says instead, shaking his head, trying to let them both off the hook. “This is the weirdest bit.”

Ryan looks up at him for a long moment.

“No, I think I’ll keep embroiling you,” Ryan says, his voice cocky and matter-of-fact, in character again. “You like it.”

It’s something Ryan, as himself, would never say. Pushing Shane around like this, getting in his space, throwing himself around like Shane’s his personal footstool: they’re things Ryan would never do.

Ryan’s a good man, but he tiptoes through the world like he’s got something to apologize for. Ricky’s a real piece of shit, but he’s fearless. It’s the intersection of these two men, the small center of that Venn diagram, that makes Shane’s palms sweat.

So, yeah. Yeah, Shane _does_ like it. He likes watching Ryan be good at this. He likes watching Ryan exact his pleasure from it with an unabashed glee and zero apologies.

Shane’s just not sure that he likes his growing sense that Ricky—a bootlegger, an illegal mover of goods, a smuggler—is a Trojan Horse, sneaking something past Shane right in front of his nose. Something he might have spotted sooner, if only he’d been paying attention.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is an attention whore pain in the ass._ **

The very next weekend they fly to DC for the Death Becomes Us festival.

They do a couple of live appearances a year now, which is plenty for Shane’s liking. It’s a pleasure and a joy to meet fans in person, but he still thinks it’s ridiculous that all these people are here to see _him_. A lot about his life verges on the surreal, but nothing more than this, and when he walks out on stage to applause he often feels like the worst kind of fraud.

Ryan gets super antsy about live events, coming out of his skin when they’re waiting in the green room the festival organizers have set up. It’s nearly identical to the energy he exudes in the moments before they enter some imposing old building to film for the first time. He adores being in front of a crowd, needs the attention like air—but he hates it too.

Ryan’s job is to manage their event, to book the rooms and the flights and get them there in one piece. By unspoken arrangement, Shane’s job is to manage _Ryan_.

They’re doing a live Q&A today, which is easier than something like a press interview in that there’s a fixed format to follow, but harder in that it quickly devolves into unpredictability. Shane’s nervous, every time they take live questions, that someone will ask a question they can’t or don’t want to answer.

This time, a well-meaning fan steps up to the crowd mic and asks, “How is Ricky Goldsworth?”

Shane deflates.

_An actual living nightmare_, he wants to respond. He pushes back a little from their table on stage, as if he could put more distance between himself and the question.

“Who’s Ricky Goldsworth?” Ryan asks innocently into his mic, making the fan and the audience laugh. Shane can see the reaction getting Ryan’s dander up, making him escalate. “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.”

He stands up and saunters over to the side of the stage, showing his joy in the cock of his head when the audience goes nuts about it. Shane says, into his own mic, “You shouldn’t have done this.”

He means it, though. The one thing Shane will not do—nay, _cannot_ do—is get all boned up in front of a live audience of teenagers. He simply will not allow it. It is beyond the pale.

“How is Ricky?” the fan repeats, jubilant, as Ryan squats at the edge of the stage to get closer to eye level. Ryan’s obviously having a fucking blast as he starts to talk to the fan a little in-character. Then he does this dumb thing where he, like, pretends to come out of his Goldsworth trance, touching his forehead and flexing his hand and generally hamming it up like this is some kind of _game_.

Shane’s suddenly so annoyed with Ryan that he can barely think straight.

“Please sit down,” he tells Ryan, glad that the version of himself that he assumes for the show is a good deal more persnickety than Shane tends to be in real life. It lets his irritation hide in plain sight.

Ryan lets the bit drop and they move on with the show. Shane exhales with relief. It’s a wake-up call, though: Shane’s not sure he can allow this to continue. It was fine at first—fun, even. It’s just that he’s starting to feel unsafe with it. Compromised.

Later, backstage, Shane chugs a whole bottle of water. He hands the second off to Ryan.

“I’ve been thinking,” he says. “Maybe the Goldsworth thing’s kind of jumped the shark.”

Ryan’s in the process of stripping off his jean jacket, which is _not_ helping Shane remain focused and self-possessed. His t-shirt clings to his back and shoulder blades, wet with sweat from the hot lights of the stage, and Shane could use another bottle of water.

“Say what now?” Ryan asks.

“I just think we’ve gone to that well a lot lately. I know you like it and the fans eat it up but, well. I don’t know. I guess I don’t get it?”

Ryan shoots him a glance over his shoulder. “What’s not to get?”

“His whole deal. I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t want anybody to think we’re trivializing mental illness or dissociative identity disorder or something.”

It’s a Hail Mary pass and he knows it. Ryan turns to him, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I let you spend,” Ryan does a quick tally in his head, “upwards of _two_ _cumulative hours_ of our Postmortems telling your dumb hot dog story, and you can’t put up with a few minutes of my thing every couple of months?”

“This whole show’s your thing!” Shane says helplessly. He doesn’t mean it, and he feels like shit when Ryan turns away again, a defensive hunch to his shoulders that says he’s hurt. “Look, whatever, man. Forget it.”

Later that night, they all wander down to the Lincoln Memorial. Shane loves the National Mall like this, by night, when it’s all lit up and the tourists have gone back to their hotels. It becomes the space he reckons it was always meant to be, quiet and meditative. The country’s best version of itself, and the place to be the best version of yourself to match.

They’re sitting on the granite terrace wall, legs swinging freely as they look out over the reflecting pool to the Washington Monument across it. The whole thing’s bathed in soft, dreamlike light. The girls are taking photos of the statue somewhere behind them, and TJ’s wandered off to call his wife.

Shane swings his leg out and hooks his foot around Ryan’s ankle.

“I didn’t mean that,” he says. “What I said before. I was just being pissy. Of course it’s not your thing, it’s our thing. Yours and mine.” He tips his head backward, indicating their crew. “And theirs.”

Ryan favors him with a big grin. Like the Big Man behind them he, too, looks lit from within on this particular evening, glowing with pride at the success of the event. It does something peculiar and churny to Shane’s insides, and he finds he has to look away.

“Yeah, I know. Don’t sweat it.” Ryan gives Shane a little tap on the arm, a little punch that says _all forgiven_, and Shane bundles down further into his hoodie against the November chill—and the excruciating pleasure of feeling known.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a murderer. _ **

2019 brings the layoffs, and the budget cuts, and the hustling for sponsorships. Suddenly they’re filming two seasons this year instead of four, and honestly Shane’s a little relieved.

He’s starting to think he’s too…attached, or something like it. A slower pace, a little more distance from Ryan, will probably do them both good after three straight years of working on this project together.

They go to Charleston with the crew in August to film an episode of the coming season of Supernatural, and all of Shane’s coping mechanisms seem to be working fine until, suddenly, they aren’t. They really, really aren’t.

“We’re here in the Old Charleston Jail, a building that has housed some of the city’s most notorious and nefarious criminals since it was built in 1802. It’s withstood fire, an earthquake, the nation’s first female serial killer, and a Civil War, and now we’re asking it to make it through one evening with the boys,” Ryan says into the camera.

“Are you saying we’re a catastrophic event on par with the conflict that tore our nation asunder?” Shane asks. “Also, back up, earthquake? Lady serial killer? Lot—lot goin’ on in here.” 

“We’ve got the three P’s,” Ryan says. “Pirates, plunderers, prisoners of war. The gang’s all here.”

“The trifecta! I mean, technically pirates _are_ plunderers, just on the ocean, so—”

“Okay, fine, the three P’s: plunderers, prisoners of war, and pedantic assholes. Better?”

Shane throws his head back in laughter, which echoes around the imposing old stone. “Yeah, that’s better.”

“You try coming up with alliteration on the spot.”

They spend a couple of hours dicking around the prison—various cells, the warden’s quarters, a room nicknamed “The Dark Room” that scares Ryan shitless for, as far as Shane can tell, no particular reason other than its superior branding—before they finally get down to the part Ryan’s clearly been looking forward to the most.

“This is the cell where Lavinia Fisher was held for nearly a year between her arrest in 1819 and her public execution in February of 1820,” Ryan says. “Lavinia and her husband John were members of a gang of highwaymen, and they owned an inn called the Six Mile House in the backcountry outside of Charleston.”

“I’m intrigued,” Shane says, leaning forward. “Tell me more about these highwaymen. Highwaypeople?”

“Well, allegedly Lavinia and John took it a step further. Lavinia would use her feminine wiles to lure rich lonely travelers in for the night, and then she’d serve them poisoned tea. Then the two of them would steal the dude’s shit.”

“Honestly, can I say it? Can I just say—good for her,” Shane says. Ryan giggles, slapping his hand on his own thigh. “No, seriously, like—okay, maybe don’t poison people, but we stan a lady who enacts radical redistribution of wealth.”

“Don’t say stan. Letting you get a TikTok was a mistake.”

“Sounds like she might have gotten away with it if someone hadn’t—_spilled the tea_,” Shane says, pulling a face for the camera.

“Jesus, you’re the worst. Anyway, legend has it she wore a white wedding dress to her own execution, and when they asked if she had any last words she screamed, and I’m quoting here, ‘If any of you have a message for the devil tell me now, for I shall be seeing him shortly!’ And then instead of waiting for them to hang her she straight up jumped off the scaffold.”

“Baller move. That’s—that’s a lady who knows her mind, right there. She’s got her business handled, and I respect it.”

“She and her husband also allegedly murdered like ten dudes.”

“Allegedly,” Shane says, using and abusing air quotes. “And they were all Richie Rich one-percenter slave-owning assholes anyway. Not the biggest loss to humanity.” 

“Okay then.” Ryan pulls out the dreaded spirit box, bane of Shane’s existence. He feels his will to live being sapped a little just to look at it.

To the empty room, Ryan says, “My name is Ryan, and this is Shane. We’re hoping to connect with either Lavinia or John Fisher, if you’re here.”

“EE—och—wob—som,” says the spirit box. “Blerrrrrp.”

“Sure,” Shane says conversationally. Ryan discreetly steps on his heel.

“Lavinia, we hear you spent the last year of your life in this cell. What was it like? Use the energy from this spirit box to answer, if you can.”

Nothing. A lot of nothing, as usual, and Shane’s about to suggest they pack it in for the night when:

“Maybe they need someone to talk to them on their level,” Ryan says to Shane. Shane doesn’t care for the speculative look on his face. “You know, criminal to criminal. Murderer to murderer.”

“I mean, unless you know something about TJ that I don’t know I’m not sure that’s an option.”

Ryan shakes his head minutely in Shane’s direction. Then something changes in his posture. He’s usually anxious on these shoots, and it shows in the tenseness of his shoulders, the way he holds his arms in tight at his sides. Before Shane’s eyes, Ryan’s shoulders loosen as he rolls his neck like he’s stretching.

“Alright, ghosts,” Ryan says, and his voice is different too, gravelly and sardonic. “I’m not here to fuck around. Let’s get some action in here right now. I didn’t fly five hours to a glorified swamp to talk to an empty room.”

“Rude,” Shane says, under his breath to hide the fact that he’s already breathless.

“My name’s Ricky,” Ryan says, “and this is Shane. Here’s what’s going to happen. You’re going to manifest yourself right now so we can talk shop about your various crimes and misdemeanors, because between you and me, I’m a big fan.”

There’s only the meaningless squawking of the spirit box, and underneath that, silence.

“Sounds like they’re not going to play ball, maybe we should—”

“No,” Ryan says. “Shut up. We will wait here all night.”

“I thought Ricky was a bootlegging gangster, what _is_ this character,” Shane says under his breath, more to himself than anything else.

“I said shut the _fuck_ up.”

A riptide of emotions curls through Shane’s chest—_excited-afraid-embarrassed-excited_. He can feel the flush on his cheeks spreading down his neck and under the collar of his shirt, and he only can hope and pray it won’t show up on camera.

“I—okay,” Shane agrees, helpless to do anything else.

Ryan’s lip curls. “Ten people isn’t even that impressive, Lavinia. I could handle more than that in my sleep, and you needed your husband to help you. Just like a woman.”

“Whoa there, Jack the Ripper, there’s no need to be misog—”

Ryan holds up a single finger in warning, and Shane—embarrassingly—stops speaking.

“Show yourself right now,” Ryan goes on, that cruel little smirk still playing on his face. “Show me something good, or I’m going to burn this whole place to the ground and send you straight to hell.”

Shane wants to get to his knees right now and show Ricky something good.

He wants it so bad his palms are sweaty with it, his legs weak and his brain slow and stupid. He’s got to get out of here. It’s not right, that he should find this sexy. It is objectively terrible, in all ways a thing can _be_ terrible.

“Okay, I think that’s enough,” he says to Ryan. “I think they get the point. It’s not their fault ghosts aren’t real.”

“If I want your opinion I’ll ask for it,” Ryan snaps. “Am I or am I not running this investigation?”

“I—yeah, I guess. I’m just saying.”

“Well, don’t.”

The problem is the unabashed joy with which Ryan unfolds into the character, embracing the opportunity to stretch his legs and be a real dick. If he was chewing the scenery a little less, taking less abject delight from the tension building in the room, maybe Shane wouldn’t be so overwhelmed by it. Maybe if Ryan’s eyes were a little less shiny and bright in the moonlit-dark Shane would be able to muscle through it.

But now Shane’s starting to become a little panicky with the need for air. He’s sure it’s obvious to anyone paying the slightest bit of attention that all the blood in his body has rushed to the north and south poles of his face and dick, respectively. It’s dark in here, but all the shitty lighting in the world can’t hide that he looks like he’s been possessed by a withered lust goblin.

“Lavinia and John, show yourselves,” Ryan demands again. “You’re starting to piss me off, which is not what you want to do.”

“Seriously, I think we should just—”

Shane’s not accustomed to feeling out of control like this. He notices with a detached absent-mindedness that he’s backed up, driven by the force of his own wanting to put more space between himself and Ryan. They’re barely both even in the shot.

Ryan speaks over him, like he’s not even listening to Shane. “I don’t tolerate insolent silence, not even from ghouls. If you don’t do something interesting in the next five seconds, I’m going to have this building demolished. Five—”

“I’m not feeling great, so—”

“Four!”

Shane’s actually stressed out by the fact that obviously nothing ghosty is going to happen. The ghosts are going to disappoint Ryan again and he’ll be the one who pays the price for it, as if the abject humiliation he’s currently experiencing isn’t punishment enough. Ryan—_Ricky_—will be meaner, and Shane will like it even more, and he’ll be more ashamed, and then he’ll like _that_ even more. And after a few rounds of this vicious cycle, Shane will probably combust in a little cloud of horny misery right here.

And then everyone will know—Ryan himself, the crew, the audience. Everybody will see.

“Two,” Ryan is saying, and Shane sort of…loses it.

“I said that’s fucking enough, Ryan!” he yells. _Actually_ yells.

The spirit box clicks off, plunging them into an abrupt, deep quiet that’s somehow even worse. Ryan’s frozen, pulled out of character and back into his own self immediately. His eyes dart to Shane, to TJ, to Katie, back to Shane.

Shane’s not a yeller, is the thing. He’s not sure he’s ever yelled at Ryan, and he’s certainly never yelled on set—not for _real_, not for anything but a joke or a bit. When he gets annoyed, he shows it with passive-aggressiveness and snide remarks, and that usually gets his point across.

So the yelling is rather unprecedented, and it’s shocked the whole room silent.

“Uh, what,” Ryan starts.

“Jesus, why do you have to push it every time? Can’t you just let it fucking go?” Shane asks, quieter now. His voice is shaky, which is humiliating, but maybe it’ll distract from the boner and the flop sweat.

He can’t be here, with everyone staring at him like he’s grown a second head, so he books it right out the creaky old cell door. As he goes, he hears TJ mutter, “Cut.”

*

It’s a full ten minutes before someone comes to find him. Shane spends it on a disgusting old staircase alone in the dark, thinking miserably about how everyone must be talking about him in his absence and wondering whose two-hundred-year-old dried blood he’s probably sitting on.

On the bright side, at least he’s no longer turned on.

“Hey, man,” he hears behind him. He swings back to look and it’s Ryan, of course it is, looking exactly like himself—big-eyed, tentatively smiling. “You okay?”

“Hey,” Shane says. “Sorry about that. I just—I wasn’t feeling well, and you were a little bit lost in the sauce.”

Ryan waves his hand. “Don’t worry about it. This can be a lot. It’s not like I’ve never lost it on set. This place is has, like, the worst energy.”

Shane wants to protest that it’s not the _location_ that’s getting to him, but he doesn’t particularly want to prompt any more questions.

“Yeah, I guess,” he says instead.

“You sure you’re not sick?” Ryan asks, taking a closer look. “You’re all red in the face, and you were breathing heavy back there.”

“I’m just tired,” Shane says. “I’m—if we could finish this up and head back to the hotel, that would be good.”

“Yeah, we got what we needed, that was the last part of the investigation. I’m ready to get outta here too, honestly. Let’s do a quick wrap and call it.”

Ryan holds his hand out for Shane, to help him up from the stairs so Shane doesn’t have to touch the gross ground or the railing. For a moment Shane’s not sure if he can take it; he thinks the touch might be too much, that the flex of his fingers under Ryan’s might be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.

But that’s silly, and Shane’s a professional. After a slight hesitation he takes Ryan’s hand and lets himself be hauled up to standing.

Ryan’s still looking at him. “You’re always tired at the end of these things, but you don’t usually yell,” he says. It’s true, and Shane knows it’s true, and Shane knows that Ryan knows he knows, so he shrugs.

“Maybe you’re right. I might be coming down with a bug.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Ryan says. He claps Shane on the back, reassuring and familiar. “Hey, this is kinda fun though, right? Usually you’re the one talking me down at these things. A little role reversal.”

“Yes,” Shane echoes. “So much fun.”

*

Back at the hotel, Ryan jumps into the shower first thing. He always does this, no matter how late they’ve gotten back after filming. Once Shane asked him why and Ryan just replied darkly, “I’ve got ghost dust on my skin.” Shane never asked again, but he assumes it’s some kind of ritualized calming because Ryan always emerges a little less rattled.

Shane changes into his pajamas and sits on his bed. He flicks on the TV; there’s nothing good on this late, but he finds an old episode of Rick Steves’ Europe on PBS and sits back against the headboard to learn more about Budapest.

Ryan comes out of the bathroom in his boxers and a t-shirt, rubbing a towel on his wet hair. Like this he’s so achingly _normal_. “Planning a European vacation?”

“Did you know that the world’s largest geothermal cave system is located under Budapest?” Shane asks him. He doesn’t say it, but he thinks privately that disappearing underground for a few months might not be the worst idea anyone’s ever had. “Maybe I’ll go spelunking.”

“Budapest does seem like it would be haunted,” Ryan says. “And it’s close to Romania, right? Vampires and shit? I’ll add it to the wish list.” Ryan keeps a list of destinations he’d like them to ghost-bust, in case there’s ever room in the budget for international travel again.

Shane sighs. It must’ve been a heavier sigh than he intended, because Ryan perches cautiously on the edge of his bed.

“Okay, what’s going on with you? Contrary to popular belief, I’m not an idiot. I do know you pretty well, and I know when you’re upset about something.”

“I’m not upset,” Shane says, but he hears the tight snap in his voice and knows it’s not convincing.

“Did I, like…do something? Are you mad at me?”

The honest answer is that Shane is a little mad at him, but he can’t say so because he knows it’s not a reasonable anger. _I’m mad at you for doing this stupid bit that turns me on_ isn’t a reasonable complaint so much as it is an HR violation.

He sighs again. “No, Ryan, I’m not mad at you.”

“If you’re ready to be done with the show you can just say so,” Ryan says. He looks down, paying undue attention to a little thread that’s come loose along the embroidery of the comforter. “I’m not gonna—like, we always knew it wasn’t going to last forever.”

Shane’s not ready to call it quits. He’s been grateful for a little distance, but he doesn’t want _all_ the distance. He’s not ready, yet, to think about a life without Ryan and the show in it.

“It’s really not that,” he says. He’s never been so tired and so keyed up at the same time, wrung out and hung to dry. He wonders if this is how Ryan always feels after a shoot. No wonder the guy’s a mess the next day.

“So you admit there’s a that!”

“Yeah, I already told you. I’m tired, I probably have a fever, and if we could turn off the lights and go to sleep and stop talking about this, that would be _swell_.”

Ryan holds up his hands. He stands up, backing off, retreating to his own bed. “Okay, fine. Whatever, dude.”

But once the lights are out, Shane lies awake for a long time. Every time he closes his eyes he sees the demeaning curl of Ryan’s mouth when he plays at being Ricky. The way he leans forward and holds eye contact, eager to see how Shane will react. The flat, dismissive tone of his voice when he tells Shane to be quiet, that nobody cares what he thinks.

Shane can’t say for sure what he would have done earlier tonight, if the crew and the cameras hadn’t been there. If it had been just him and Ryan alone in that place, and Ryan had demanded that Shane impress him, Shane might have done it. He might have gone to his knees, asked for it rough and mean. He could have made Ryan come, Ryan’s fingers tangled in his hair, tears streaming down his cheeks, coughing and spluttering around him.

It’s not as if Ryan would have wanted that or allowed it, but it’s what Shane had wanted in the moment, so badly it still shocks him. On the off chance, he’d have taken it any way Ryan wanted to give it.

Thinking about it now, Shane slides a hand into his boxers. This isn’t something he does while sharing a hotel room for work, any more than yelling on set is something he does, and yet here he is. If Ricky Goldsworth’s killed anything or anyone, it’s this: Shane’s good sense. His propriety. His willpower.

The sheet rustles over Shane’s hand and he freezes, listening hard for some sign of consciousness from Ryan. Ryan’s breathing is deep and even, suggesting he dropped off a while ago. Usually once he’s out, he’s out.

Shane exhales carefully as he wraps his hand around himself. It won’t take much; he’s been hovering somewhere in the general vicinity of turned on since that moment in the cell, well over an hour ago.

He _barely_ moves his hand, so it only creates the slightest rhythmic rustling noise, the smallest of sounds, and he closes his eyes and imagines.

He imagines Ryan’s hand on his head, fisted in his hair, tugging Shane’s head back on his neck to look up at him. “Open your mouth,” Ryan would say, unzipping his pants, because this is Ricky they’re talking about here, much smoother than Ryan would ever be. Ryan as himself would hem and haw about this, would be gentle. He’d ask about ten million times if Shane was okay. But not Ricky.

Shane would let his mouth fall open. Maybe his eyes would close as Ryan fed him his dick, inch by inch, and maybe Ryan would deliver a sharp little smack to his cheek. “Keep your eyes open,” he’d order.

Shane would make some noise or another, a whimper. Maybe he’d gag a little and Ryan would smile and push deeper anyway, unrelenting, uninterested in everything but taking his own pleasure, until the length of him was all Shane could smell or taste or feel. Shane would fight to keep his eyes open while Ryan fucked his mouth—and he’d be brutal about it, too, until Shane was a mess of spit and tears and come.

It’s everything Shane hates about porn, or _thought_ he hated, and yet it’s everything he wants. He feels ashamed for wanting it, but the shame only compounds the pleasure.

He’s close—_so_ close, so close he isn’t really paying attention to how much noise he’s making, so close he lets out a tiny, choked-out stuttering gasp when his fingers rub under the head of his dick just right—when Ryan suddenly flicks on the lamp on his nightstand.

“What the fuck, dude?”

Shane yelps and pulls his hand out of his boxers like it’s on fire, which isn’t exactly _less_ suspicious.

Ryan’s lying on his side, facing Shane, which means that at some point he turned over from his back and Shane didn’t even notice. He’s tucked up under the covers, so all Shane can see is his face and the arm that reached over to turn on the lamp. His eyes are wide and shiny in the dim light.

“What’s up?” Shane asks stupidly, after a long beat of silence. He’d been going for sleepy, but instead his voice sounds thick with arousal and guilty as hell.

“You tell me. What _is_ up?”

“Uh.”

“I knew it!” Ryan shoots up to a sitting position. He points at Shane in what is frankly feeling like a pretty accusatory fashion, not that Shane doesn’t deserve it. “You were—oh man, this is _so weird_!”

“Okay, well, I thought you were asleep,” Shane says, defensive.

“And you couldn’t go into the bathroom like a normal person? Unless—”

“I’m going right now!”

Shane gets out of bed. He’s still hard enough to cut glass, his boxers tented dramatically as he sort of hobbles to the bathroom. His body’s become so hard-wired to react this way to shame that even the horror of being caught hasn’t put a dent in his arousal.

Ryan snickers. “Holy shit, you’re about to Hulk out of those. I think your boner has a boner.”

“It’s not funny!” Shane hisses, slamming the door behind him for good measure. Then he jerks off furiously and silently, bent over the toilet, cheeks warm as he thinks about Ryan outside the bathroom laughing at him.

He comes harder than he’s ever come in his entire life, and then he flushes the toilet and washes his hands and starts to laugh at himself too. Because of course the problem is that it is funny; this whole thing is ridiculous. He laughs until he cries, little tears of mirth pricking the corners of his eyes, and then he laughs harder picturing Ryan sitting on the bed out there _listening_ to him laughing.

When he emerges from the bathroom a few minutes later, still wiping tears from his eyes, he finds Ryan sitting cross-legged on the bed. He’s got the pad of hotel stationary and a pen and he’s, god help them both, taking _notes_.

“Writing this down in your dream diary?” Shane slides back into his bed.

“I’m just trying to figure out what’s going on here.”

“I’m not some mystery for you to solve, Ryan,” Shane says. “I don’t want to _get into it_. I don’t want to hear your theories. I want to go to sleep. Some things are private, okay?”

“Okay,” Ryan agrees. “Fine. Promise me it’s not about me, then. If you can honestly tell me this is none of my business, that it has nothing to do with me, I’ll drop it.”

“It’s not about you,” Shane lies automatically. Then he sighs, because he’s not a liar, and Ryan’s asking him point-blank. “It’s like—okay, fine, stop looking at me like that. _Technically_ it’s not about you.”

Ryan frowns. He consults his notes. Shane can practically hear him thinking with the effort of it, can see him mentally connecting all the dots with red string like some mad conspiracy theorist. Ryan is pretty smart, at least when nothing supernatural is involved, so it’s no surprise when his guess lands somewhere adjacent to the truth.

“Shane. Is it possible you’ve got, like, a crush on Ricky Goldsworth?” Ryan asks it with a disbelieving smile on his face, like he’s pretty sure he’s wrong but has to ask anyway.

“It’s not a crush,” Shane snaps. And in fairness, it’s not a crush. _Crush_ is a word for the teen heartthrobs you put up on your bedroom wall in middle school, not for psychopaths. Shane’s always thought of it as a kink, or a fascination, or an undefinable _thing_. “It’s just a thing.”

Ryan leans back on his bed, tucking his hands under his head, the picture of unbearable smuggery. “Oh, Ryan, that bit’s getting stale, we should retire it,” he mimics. “’Don’t you think we’ve done the Goldsworth thing a lot lately?’ Unbelievable.”

“It’s not like that,” Shane says, even though it is in fact exactly like that.

“What’s it like, then?” Ryan asks. 

Shane is sure Ryan will regret pulling on this particular thread; it is, after all, a lot even for Shane, who’s had nearly two full years to sit with it. But he’s also too tired and confused and out of sorts to fend off the questions. By the light of day, under different circumstances, he might have been able to dodge it, but not tonight. Not with Ryan looking at him like that, curious and wary and _asking_, and Shane’s been bursting to talk about it for ages.

“It’s like,” Shane starts, thinking about the least creepy way to say it. “You’re, when you’re him, you’re different. Assertive. I never thought that was my cuppa, but,” and he smiles weakly, “surprise!”

“Your _cuppa_?” Ryan repeats. “Is this some kind of defense mechanism where you pretend to be British in the hopes that I won’t understand you?”

“I turn into a 1940s Midwestern newscaster when I’m nervous, okay, Ryan? Get off my dick about it.”

“Sounds like you want the opposite of that, though,” Ryan says. And then, helpfully, in case Shane didn’t get the point: “I mean it sounds like you want to get on _my_ dick about it.”

“Yes, I got that, thank you.”

Another long silence.

“So it’s the mean thing?” Ryan asks. Shane can sense him trying his very best to be still, to be quiet, as if he’s afraid to make any sudden movements. “It’s about getting roughed around?”

“Yep,” Shane says, trying to sound quite chill and cavalier about this whole thing. “And, I don’t know. Insulted, and humiliated, and just—all that good stuff.”

“All of that stuff sounds scary.”

Shane shrugs again. His shrugging muscles have been getting a real workout tonight. “What can I say? Humans are complicated psychosexual beings. Sometimes we want new things, and sometimes those things are kind of iffy, and that’s just life, buddy.”

Shane’s spent a lot of valuable time and mental energy trying to figure out why he’s so into this; what about his psychology, specifically, craves it. He still has no answers, and what’s more, he finds he’s reached the end of his tether for caring. It’s probably too much to ask that Ryan get to a similar place of nonchalance over the course of one strange night.

“All those years ago when I joked about you being a sex Snapple, I never imagined it was true,” Ryan says, seeking familiar joking ground in his discomfort. “I never thought you might _actually_ be well-versed in the art of sexual deviance.”

“I’m not. I don’t—just because I vaguely want things doesn’t mean I know anything about them. I’m recognizable enough that I can’t wander into any old sex club and be like, take me apart, strangers!”

Ryan giggles, and then the giggling turns into a coughing fit. When he’s done, he says, “There are apps for that, right?”

“Same problem. I can’t trust the privacy. There’d be pictures floating around of me with a ball gag in my mouth, being peed on by some dude named Crazy Tony or some shit. No thank you.”

“Crazy Tony,” Ryan wheezes. “You could hire a professional. I’m sure you could pay a dominatrix to step on you or whatever. Or does it have to be a dude? Is there a word for a dude who’s a dominatrix? Like a domina_tro_?”

Shane winces. He’s sure there’s a word for it, but this isn’t really a direction he’d like this to go: into the specifics of what and where and who. “Ryan, I appreciate it, but this isn’t really a problem I need you to solve for me. You asked, I told, can we leave it there? Can we just drop it?”

“Yeah, we can,” Ryan says, nodding his head. He looks faintly pink in the face too, probably almost as flustered about this whole thing as Shane is. Theirs is not typically a relationship for over-sharing, and Ryan will have learned more about his sex life in the last ten minutes than in the previous five years combined. “We’ll put the Goldsworth bit on the shelf. It had a good run, but it’s obviously—” his lip twitches— “uh, making things harder for you, so.”

“Oh, fuck off.”

Ryan cackles. Shane smiles in spite of himself, relieved that it doesn’t seem like Ryan’s too upset. He’ll be sorry to see Ricky Goldsworth go, but it’ll be for the best, and they can put all this behind them.

*

Shane’s almost asleep when Ryan says, from across the room in the darkness, “So what were you thinking about?”

His heart sinks. He should have known he was getting off too easy. “Ryan. You said we were dropping this.”

“I am! We are. I’m—it’s me, dude. You know I’m gonna spiral about this. I can’t help it.”

“Just. It’s nothing novel,” Shane trails off, trying to figure out how to pump the brakes on this conversation before it has a chance to get started. “Think about the grossest, sloppiest, most degrading porn you ever got off to and felt bad about immediately afterward. Picture that and…there you go.”

He can hear Ryan swallow. “That’s pretty wild,” he says. He sounds different than before, quiet, like he’s finally shed all his energy from the shoot. “I don’t know what to think about that.”

Ryan’s silent for a long moment, and then he adds, “And, like, I can’t even be flattered because it isn’t really about me, it’s about _him_. Like you said.”

It sounds like he’s _checking_. Like he’s confirming that’s true, like it’s the last thing he needs to be able to set it aside and get on with his life. Shane wishes he could give that to Ryan, but he knows it’s more complicated than that.

There’s a small part of Ricky in Ryan, something in it that Ryan needs or craves too, or he wouldn’t return to the well so much. The things that excite Shane must be the same things that Ryan likes, in his own way: the differentness of it, the strangeness, the ability to live outside of consequences for a fleeting minute or two. The chance to be someone new.

Shane makes an equivocating noise. “I don’t have any answers. All I know is that before Ricky I didn’t think about that at all, and after him I did.” 

“You really think it can be like that?” Ryan asks, speculative. “Like flipping a switch? You just don’t want something for thirty-whatever years, and then suddenly someone breathes on you funny and you do?”

Shane hums. “I wouldn’t have thought so before, but that’s how it was for me. So yeah.”

“I wonder...” Ryan starts to venture some theory or another, but he clearly thinks better of it.

“You wonder?” Shane prompts, in spite of his best instincts.

Ryan giggles, high-pitched and nervous. “Nothing. Never mind. I’m just tired.”

If it sounds as artificial as Shane’s own protestations of exhaustion during the shoot, Shane doesn’t really notice. It’s been a peculiar night, and of course Ryan’s feeling strange about it. Things will be vaguely uncomfortable for a while, until one day they aren’t. That, too, is life.

Shane drops off to sleep eventually. Right before he does, he becomes aware that Ryan’s breathing hasn’t gone deep and even and relaxed.

He’s still awake, thinking and stewing. Wondering.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a provocateur._ **

And that should be it. It should be done.

Except the thing Shane forgot to factor in is this: the whole reason Ricky exists is that Ryan doesn’t know when to say _uncle_. He doesn’t know when to stop, once he’s got something in his teeth.

It’s well over two months later. They’re out with the team for a dual celebration, the end of season six of Unsolved Supernatural and Ryan’s 29th birthday. Shane doesn’t know this bar very well, it’s a newish one in DTLA called The Wolves that Ryan suggested for “the vibes.” It’s dark inside, full of vintage stained glass and antique oak, so Shane guesses the vibe in question is “Victorian murder mystery at a train station.”

“Something about this place makes me feel like I might get stabbed by an au pair with a dark secret,” Shane says to Ryan, sliding carefully around bodies at the busy bar to join their group at a table. They’re clutching matching bourbon cranberries that are lightly smoking. “Jesus, it’s tight in here, isn’t it?”

Ryan snickers, opens his mouth to say something, glances to the side, and snaps it shut again.

“I’m surprised you like this,” Shane says. “Pretty classy for the likes of you, isn’t it? Nary a beer pong table in sight.”

Shane thinks he likes it. It’s dark in here, heavy—like it would be smoky if you could still smoke in LA bars.

He passes a good hour chatting with friends, toasting the end of the season and Ryan’s health, and then one by one their numbers start to thin as people go back home to their girlfriends, their boyfriends, their pets, their Netflix accounts. Soon it’s just a small group of them huddled by their table.

“Shane,” Ryan says, snapping his fingers to get Shane’s attention. “Hey. Shane. Go get me another drink.”

He picks up his empty glass and rattles the ice around under Shane’s nose.

“Get it yourself, lazy,” Shane says, laughing, surprised to have been snapped at. He feels lightheaded, drunker than he ought to be considering how much he’s had to drink. He remembers reading somewhere that the first time you drink at a new place you get drunk faster, because your body lacks context for what you’re putting it through. It doesn’t know to prepare itself, and so it goes bumbling headfirst into gleeful inebriation.

Ryan cocks his head to the right. There’s color high on his cheekbones, which are themselves quite high. His eyes are glassy, from the alcohol or the unfamiliar lighting, Shane’s not sure. He’s not laughing.

“No,” he repeats, slower this time. More purposeful. Shane has to strain to hear him over the din of the bar. “No, Shane, you’re going to get me a fucking drink.”

Ryan takes a twenty from his wallet and presses it into Shane’s slack hand, and Shane understands he’s not being asked after all. He’s being told. “Get yourself another one too, while you’re at it.”

Shane catches it again in the light, that glint, the triplet whites of Ryan’s eyes and smile. He must make some small noise, because Ryan sucks air through his teeth and sits back in his seat to take him in, his posture cavalier and considering.

Shane opens his mouth to tell Ryan that this _thing_ he’s dealing with isn’t a toy for Ryan to play with when he’s bored. He tries, but it won’t come out, and Ryan points at the bar expectantly.

“I said I’m thirsty,” he tells Shane.

No. _Shane’s_ thirsty.

Shane’s feet are moving without his permission, pushing him up from his seat and toward the bar to do as Ryan’s ordered. The twenty’s still clutched in his hand, crumpled and humiliatingly damp from the perspiration of his palm. He orders two of something, but as soon the words leave his mouth he’s forgotten what.

What does Ryan think he’s playing at? In Charleston he’d been sympathetic, discomfited on Shane’s behalf, awkward. Maybe even a little contrite, to have pushed these secret buttons for so long without knowing. He’d definitely gotten the message: no more Ricky.

Shane returns to the table and places a sweating glass in front of Ryan. Ryan cocks his eyebrow and lifts the glass to his lips to take a sip. Shane can’t look away.

“It’s good,” Ryan says, but in it Shane hears _you’re so good_. He exhales, watching Ryan’s tongue dart out and flick against the rim of the glass to catch a bit of sugar there. “Pineapple, huh? Interesting choice.”

Shane can hear the smirk there, and he feels himself flushing. “Not…it wasn’t, like. I just picked something.”

He looks at his own glass. He wants to take a drink, but instead he waits. He waits, just to see what will happen.

“Drink,” Ryan says. He’s got his (substantial) arms folded over his (also substantial) chest again. It makes his biceps strain against his t-shirt; it makes Shane’s heart strain against his own chest, like it could beat its way right out.

“Ryan…” Shane starts. He feels like they should talk about this. Ryan’s riling him up. He’s doing it deliberately and knowingly—probably only because he’s drunk and bored, but still. Shane has the general sense that his private sexual proclivities are not a bear his friends should poke for their own amusement.

“No.” Ryan cuts him off, flat and affectless. He really is good at this by now. He slides into the part naturally, as if he’s missed playing it. “I paid for it, didn’t I? Now you’re gonna be rude and not drink it?”

Shane raises the glass to his lips and drinks. Ryan watches him drink the whole thing; they sit there, a quiet tension stretching between them, each draining their glass. Shane shakes his head, trying to think through the fog that’s settled over him. He really is tanked, he realizes, drunker than he’s been in a long time.

Suddenly overwhelmed, he leans over, putting his head nearly between his knees. He hears the scrape of Ryan’s stool against the floor, and then Ryan’s there, standing over him.

“Come on,” he says, “up.”

Shane goes to move, but his legs won’t cooperate. Ryan’s hand falls to the back of his neck and squeezes there, right at the fleshy part where you’d pick up a dog by the scruff.

The feeling of his hand there, the shock of fingertips digging in hard on the back of Shane’s neck, propels him up. Before he knows it Ryan’s leading him out of the bar like that. Shane wonders if it looks strange to onlookers, if somewhere in the bar TJ is watching them go and wondering.

“I thought you were better at holding your alcohol than this,” Ryan says outside. He’s pulled Shane to the edge of the sidewalk, against the building, out of the way of passers-by. Shane isn’t sure what will happen next. “Pathetic.”

“Ryan,” Shane starts again, “What—”

“This is you,” Ryan says, and then he gets a hand on Shane’s elbow and one at his neck and is crowding him into the backseat of a Honda Civic that’s just pulled up. The hand on his neck presses Shane down, down, down—he could go to his knees, he wants to—but instead he hits the plush softness of the seat.

Shane looks up. Ryan’s eyes are inky-dark, and Shane can’t figure out what’s going on behind them. This whole night came clean out of nowhere to hit him where he wasn’t expecting. Namely, below the belt.

The Lyft driver is whistling tunelessly to himself, something that might be from Les Mis. Dimly Shane wonders if the guy’s aware that something kinda freaky’s going down in the backseat of his car while he’s working through the best of Broadway.

“Ryan,” Shane says again. He can’t seem to get much further than that; every time he says Ryan’s name, to remind himself who this is, why this is so exceptionally bizarre, it pulls him up short. “Holy shit.”

“Text me when you get home safe,” Ryan instructs, and then he shuts the door and raps on it to signal to the driver that he can go. As the car pulls away from the curb to take Shane home, he turns around and looks back. Ryan’s watching them drive away, hands in his pockets, foot scuffling along the edge of the sidewalk. The character has already faded away, leaving the uncertain, hunched-over reality of the man behind.

*

When Shane stumbles into his apartment, he pointedly doesn’t text Ryan, as he was told to do. Instead he gets a glass of water, tosses some more cold water on his face, and flops down on his kitchen floor to stew.

“Can you believe this shit?” he asks Obi. Obi flicks his tail and looks pointedly at his food dish, which is still at least half full, as if he could ask Shane the same question. Shane waves a hand at him. “Oh, forget it. You’re no help.”

He undresses down to his boxers, ready for bed, and tries to decide whether it’s still too soon to jerk off about this. He feels like he’s sort of still—_in it_.

He gets in bed to try to sleep it off, but he can’t settle. There’s something gnawing at him. It takes him a little while to place it, and then he realizes: he never texted Ryan back. His fingers itch with the desire to pick up his phone and shoot off a quick text. He thinks that if he doesn’t, Ryan will drop this and never bring it up again. He’ll let it go, maybe for good this time.

If Shane texts back, however. If Shane plays along, maybe something else will happen.

He’s got to know. He picks up his phone and texts Ryan before he can think about it: _Home safe._

_good_, Ryan texts back immediately, like he was waiting by his phone. _thanks._

Shane waits a few minutes, but nothing else comes. Feeling a little let down in some unspecified way, he puts his phone on the bedside table and turns over to try to sleep.

Then his phone buzzes with another text.

He flails to grab the phone, knocking it and his glasses off the table in the process. Finally he manages to open the new text from Ryan.

_took you long enough, i kno you mustve been home for ages._

Shane’s about to text back something snotty, like, “sorry, mom,” but he leaves it. He’s got a feeling Ryan’s not done, and sure enough, his phone vibrates again.

_show me something you like._

Shane closes his eyes. He breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth for twenty long seconds. He’s still too drunk to parse exactly what Ryan means, although it does have a generally salacious feel to it.

Just to be an asshole, he gets up and takes a photo of Obi, asleep on the couch. He sends Ryan the photo.

_cute. not what i meant._

Shane giggles out loud to himself to exorcise his nerves. Then, before he has the chance to talk himself out of it or freak out too much, he texts Ryan a link.

The link’s to a video clip he’s been getting a lot of mileage out of lately. Revealingly, it features a muscular, dark haired guy smack-talking some twink while fucking his face, just really going to town with the dirty talk before he pulls back to paint the dude’s cheeks and chin. Moments after sending it, Shane’s filled with something like trepidatious regret. Drunk though they both may be, he really should have sent his other current favorite, the one with the chick and her strap-on. Ease Ryan into it a little.

Three minutes. Five. Ten. Enough time passes that Shane figures either this has seriously backfired in his face or it’s going really, _really_ well, and he isn’t prepared just yet to say which.

Finally, his phone rings. A glance at the caller ID confirms his suspicions.

“’Lo.”

“Huh,” Ryan says in response. He sounds sleepy. Still tipsy. Dazed. He sounds like Shane feels. “Huh.”

“You asked,” Shane says, already on the defensive. “You started it.”

“I know I did.”

“Well, curiosity killed the cat, Ryan.” Shane shifts over onto his side, squinting into the darkness to see if his own cat is nearby.

“You really want that?” Ryan asks. His voice catches on the “want” and scratches across it, and Shane feels it like fingernails up his back. “That’s what you…what you think about?”

“Yeah, I guess so. Don’t ask questions you know you won’t like the answers to.”

There’s a long, embarrassed silence.

“I didn’t say I didn’t like the answer.”

Shane’s hard in his boxers. He reaches down to adjust himself through the fabric. He’s unwilling to be caught like this again, but also desperate times call for desperate measures. And he’s _desperate_, desperate for it, he has been all night.

“You were being different tonight,” Shane says, the understatement of the century. “You were being him, right? Ricky?”

Ryan hums his agreement. Shane tries to imagine what he’s doing; puttering his house getting ready for bed, probably. Staying quiet so his roommates don’t hear, tucking his phone into the crook of his shoulder while he straightens out his sheets and tucks the ends under so he can shimmy in the way he likes.

“So. What the fuck were you thinking?” Shane prompts.

Ryan sighs. “What if—okay, don’t be mad at me. Don’t say anything for a second. Just…what if this was something I thought I could do for you?”

As requested, Shane doesn’t say anything. He lets that one sizzle.

“Shane?”

“_Do_ for me?” Shane bursts out. “Like, what, you let me suck you off, as a favor to _me_? You’re not even into dudes, you’re into blowjobs!”

“I might be,” Ryan protests. “I mean, we don’t know, right, if I’ve never—if it hasn’t—empirically, I mean, there’s no _proof_ I’m not. It’s untested.”

Shane cackles helplessly, because he knows this is going to be good. “Oh, _now_ he cares about proof!”

“I just _mean_,” Ryan goes on over Shane’s laughter. “I just mean, like, I’ve never seen a ghost with my own two eyes, right? But I still believe that they might be real. In general my worldview is, you know, open—”

“Open!”

“—to lots of possibilities,” he finishes.

“You don’t get to be Schrödinger’s bisexual when it’s convenient for you, Ryan.”

“None of this is _convenient_ for me, but it’s still invaded my brain, so that’s where we are. It doesn’t have to be a big deal. It scratches an itch for both of us, right? It’s just that for you it’s a sex itch and for me it’s a brain itch. I think it might be an interesting experiment.”

Shane opens his mouth to say something cutting and final, like “I don’t want to be your dick experiment” or “sex itch sounds like a venereal disease,” but finds that he can’t come out with it. Obviously he wants to be Ryan’s dick experiment in the very worst way.

If you look at it from another angle, the inherent danger makes it even more appealing. The strong possibility that Ryan might not like it, that he might look at Shane with disgust or pity and say, _actually, this isn’t going to work_, makes it somehow better. The risk of it makes Shane throb in his boxers.

So when a little moan escapes his mouth instead, Shane can almost hear Ryan’s Cheshire Cat grin through the phone.

“Sounds like a yes to me,” he says. “Come on, Shane. Are you already getting off, or do you need me to tell you to?”

Half of Shane is utterly boggled at how quickly this turned into phone sex, by how good Ryan’s instincts are for it. The other half of him has been expecting it all night. Truth be told, some tiny sliver of him has been expecting it since Charleston, the part of him that took note of Ryan’s curiosity, his sleepless shallow breathing a bed away.

His yearning silence must be a tell. He rubs himself over his shorts, gingerly pressing at the tiny wet spot that’s forming.

“Go on, do it,” Ryan says. “I’ll wait.”

He almost sounds—_bored_. Shane can hear the telltale quaver under it, though, nerves or excitement or both at once. He’s touched by the performance; can feel Ryan striving to be what he thinks Shane is looking for. Ryan’s always been eager to please, but it never occurred to Shane how that desire might dovetail so seamlessly with this one.

Shane spits in his hand, not bothering to hide the noise. If Ryan wants to know, fine—he’s gonna _know_. He slides his hand into his boxers to wrap around his dick. His breath catches as his grip tightens, and then eases off into a sigh of relief and impending release when he fucks into the tight circle of his own fist.

“Tell me what you were thinking about, that night in Charleston, when you couldn’t help yourself even though I was right there in the room,” Ryan says, tinny and faraway in Shane’s ear. “Be specific.”

“I was thinking about what I would have done at the jail, if the whole team hadn’t been there.”

“Yeah, no shit, dude. I said be _specific_.”

“You nosy fuck.”

“Shane.” There’s steel there, and the truth spills out of Shane before he has any further opportunity to think better of it.

“I was thinking about how I wanted you to make me suck your cock,” Shane says. “Right…right there, kneeling in the dust. I wanted it rough, like—like in the video I sent you.”

“Yeah, I watched it,” Ryan says, and just the thought of that has Shane close. “You wanted me to use you? Fuck your throat? You wanted me to call you names and leave you there, in a fucking haunted prison, dirt on your knees and my come drying on your face?”

Shane squints his eyes closed. He can hear himself breathing into the phone, ragged and harsh. “Y—yeah. Something like that.”

“I think I can do that,” Ryan says, quietly, speculatively, and Shane comes so hard he drops his phone again. He can hear Ryan laughing on the other end of it, breathless with shock, fucking _delighted_ with his own daring.

*

And then, after they’ve hung up, Ryan texts: _but_ _not in a haunted prison obviously i dont go dicks out in front of ghouls. what if one possessed u and u bit it off???? _and Shane shoves his face into his pillow and laughs himself to sleep.

*

In the sober light of the morning, Shane’s got more questions than he has answers. Primarily: what the fuck? But also there are the corollary questions of _where_ the fuck and _when_ the fuck—which, assuming Ryan’s still on board once he sobers up, are almost as important.

When they see each other at work on Monday, Ryan gives him a classic bro-nod, that unknowable upward tilt of the chin. Ryan once talked him through all the different variants of the bro-nod. Shane hadn’t realized there were so many, each with layers of meaning and its own corresponding level of intimacy.

He wonders if there’s a nod that conveys, “Hey bro, thanks for the phone bone, looking forward to you sucking me off at some unspecified point in the near future.”

Maybe this _is_ that nod.

“Morning,” Shane says, wary. Ryan’s been known to lash out when he gets uncomfortable, some sort of performative deflection of feelings that Shane’s been on the receiving end of before.

“Hi,” Ryan says. He looks away again, in the general direction of his computer monitor, but there’s half of a bitten-back, goofy grin on his face. Shane lets himself relax. If Ryan can smile about it, it can’t be that bad.

“Good weekend?” Shane asks, like he isn’t bursting to ask if Ryan’s doing okay, how he’s feeling, what he’s thinking, if he’s weirded out. He’s keenly aware that their coworkers are going about their days around them, clueless.

“Pretty good,” Ryan says, tucking his hands behind his head and leaning back in his chair oh-so-casually. A less attentive observer would think he was stretching. Shane knows he’s showing off. “Played some Mario Kart, watched the Chargers game. Low key.”

“Same.” Shane sets his messenger bag down with a clatter on the floor by his desk and turns on his computer. “Minus the Chargers game and the Mario Kart.”

As he goes to open his email and the Buzzfeed Slack channel, he can feel Ryan’s eyes on him. He picks up a pen and whips it in Ryan’s direction. It bounces off his left bicep.

“Put those away,” Shane says. “They’re creating a hostile work environment.”

Ryan rolls his eyes up to the ceiling and beams. Shane feels a nervous flutter in his stomach, those telltale butterflies, and for the first time he can’t pretend it’s about Ricky Goldsworth at all. Not even a little bit.

*

They obviously can’t do it at Shane’s apartment.

“Obi would try to watch us the whole time and it would be deeply unsettling. Plus it would be too, like, casual.”

“What, you’re holding out for a bed covered in rose petals?” Ryan asks, tucking his legs up under himself. They’re eating their lunch up on their empty set, because nobody else at Buzzfeed is in the studios between noon and one on free Mexican food truck day. “As I recall, a fuckin’—a_ prison cell_ was good enough for you a couple of months ago.”

“I just think setting matters,” Shane grouses. “You’re a producer, think of it that way. It’s like when we film somewhere with working electricity but you won’t let us turn on the lights. It’s got to feel right.”

Ryan frowns in understanding. “Well, my place is out too. My roommates are always there. I’m not even sure they have jobs.”

Shane winces at the idea of doing anything even remotely sexy within a fifty foot radius of that frathouse nightmare. He feels sure that Ryan’s roommates would be listening at the door and providing ESPN-style commentary.

“What about a hotel?” Ryan asks. “I saw this thing once where this couple pretended to meet up in a hotel bar, like they didn’t know each other. It seemed sort of fun.”

“Was this _thing_ you saw porn?”

Ryan takes a huge bite of his burrito, chewing slowly as if to buy himself more time. Finally he swallows, looking sheepish. “No, it was…just this TV show.”

“What show, Ryan?”

“I don’t really want to say.”

“Ryan.”

“It was Modern Family, okay, a lot of people watched it back in the day—”

“Oh my god.”

“It won like twenty Emmys, Shane!”

Ryan takes another bite of burrito. He’s got sour cream and guacamole all over his chin. Shane can only stare, trying to decide whether he’s feeling resignation or disgust or both—or neither. He can’t believe _this man_ is capable of making Shane feel the way he does, tongue-tied and stupid and sweaty. This man, sitting in front of him food-smeared and talking fondly about lame mid-2000s sitcoms. This man, who believes in _ghosts_.

Ryan seems to sense he’s thinking it. He uncrosses his legs and stretches them wide, leaning back in his chair. “Sure you’re not having second thoughts, big guy? What’s that thing all the girls used to have in their Facebook profiles, the Marilyn Monroe thing?”

Shane shrugs. He’s distracted now by the spread of Ryan’s legs, by the pull of Ryan’s jeans across his thighs.

“Right,” Ryan says, snapping his fingers. He wipes his chin with his napkin. “If you can’t handle me at my Ryanest, you don’t deserve me at my Rickyest.”

“You don’t think I’ve proved by now that I can handle you at your Ryanest?” Shane asks.

He thinks back over the last five years: all the stupid shit they’ve gotten up to, all the dumb bits, all the late nights and early mornings. He’s seen Ryan exhausted and mean with it at four in the morning. He’s seen Ryan unshowered and panicking to get the ep up on time, running on coffee and Red Bull and four hours’ sleep in two days. He’s seen Ryan heartbroken; and wearing terribly-applied lipstick; and running out of a house yelping in terror because a Maglite turned on.

Which isn’t to say that Shane’s earned it, exactly. Just that he if he can’t handle it, no one can.

Ryan nods. “Fair enough.”

He laughs and scrubs his hand over his face. His burrito’s only half-eaten but it lies pushed to the side and forgotten on his paper plate. “I’m sorry, this is, uh—the weirdest, right? The thing that really gets me is that, like. I never even thought about Ricky Goldworth. Not really.”

“_That’s_ the thing that gets you?”

“I mean I didn’t do any real character work at all. There’s no consistency there! Like, is he a mobster? Is he a serial killer? I never bothered to flesh it out. He’s just always been whatever I needed him to be.”

“Yeah, I noticed,” Shane says, wry. “Well he’s definitely been what I’ve needed him to be, so join the club.”

Ryan goes faintly pink. Shane watches his face, and spies the very moment when something unguarded slips past him. “I think I liked that you liked it. It always got a reaction. First it made you laugh, and then it annoyed you. I didn’t realize, but—I think that was what I wanted.”

He looks up at Shane, his eyes big and sincere and _unafraid_, and that’s when Shane knows it’s real. It’s going to happen. What’s more, they both want it to, whatever Ryan says about curiosity and experiments and brain itches.

“Well, shit,” Shane says.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is a closer of deals._ **

In the end they go with the hotel idea. However stupid the genesis of it, it’s undoubtedly the best of their options: aesthetically appealing, reasonably anonymous, and neutral ground. There’s a little veil of salaciousness Shane likes about it, although he wouldn’t say so to Ryan. Nobody’s going to be leaving any money on the nightstand, but there’s something transactional in it that excites him.

Ryan checked into the Hotel Normandie three hours ago. Shane doesn’t know anything about the room; he’s never even been in the place, although he knows it by reputation. He doesn’t know what Ryan will be wearing, or what he’ll say.

He only knows that at 10 pm he’s going to walk into the hotel bar, and he’s going to sit down, and he’s going to order a drink. And Ryan will be there, waiting for him, only Ryan won’t be Ryan.

Planning this felt not unlike planning a shoot. Ryan took the lead on logistics early on. They’ve spent a fair amount of time storyboarding this, seeing it in their heads, mapping it out together—but only to a point. Shane can imagine, clear as day, walking backlit into the bar, seeing Ryan skulking in a velvet booth out of the corner of his eye. He can envision the feel of the glass under his hands, icy and sweaty, Ryan’s eyes on him.

He can see it all, unrolling shot-by-shot in front of them. He just can’t imagine what it will _feel_ like.

His Lyft gets there too early, ten minutes to, and Shane loiters awkwardly outside on the sidewalk of KTown. It’s only starting to buzz for the night, and it won’t really get going on these streets for another hour. He almost wishes he smoked, just for something to do with his hands.

At ten on the nose Shane slides through the door, catching the eye of the bellhop and pointing at the bar off the lobby, the universal sign for “thanks, but I’ve got it.”

The Normandie Club’s nice, for a hotel bar; dimly-lit, all white bricks and black leather. The Old Hollywood vibes make him feel like he’s stepped back in time, and that feels right too: Ricky Goldsworth would feel at home here, among classic cocktails and old money.

He scans the bar from the doorway, ostensibly scouting out a place to sit. And he is—but he’s also looking for Ryan. Shane spots him in a far corner, nursing a glass of something amber-gold, the color of honey, and he has to fight the urge to give him a thumbs-up.

Shane slides into a seat at the quiet end of the bar. He gets the bartender’s attention: “Old Fashioned, when you get a chance?”

It’s an old drink for an old dance, the oldest. It’s the kind of drink you order when you’re looking for trouble and you already know for damn sure you’ll find it.

It lands in front of him a moment later, and he takes a sip, and then a second bigger one. It calms his nerves right away. Shane’s not much of a drinker, but as with smoking he understands the appeal of it tonight.

He wonders if this is what an early mid-life crisis looks like. He feels like he’s out cruising for vices.

He’s got his head down, but he feels when Ryan slides into the seat next to him, hears the small exhale of the leather pulled taut over the bar stool when weight lands on it.

“Another,” Ryan says, evidently to the bartender—as close to impolite as he’d ever come to a service worker, and Shane can feel it paining him not to add the _please_.

Shane can’t help it, he has to look up. He sneaks a glance at Ryan. He’s been so curious about the character choices Ryan would make for this. Now that it’s time to pin Ricky down once and for all, he wonders what direction will it go: dressed up or down? Thug or smooth criminal?

He’d have guessed a full suit, but it’s more subtle than that. Ryan’s wearing a crisp white button-down, and it’s not one Shane recognizes. Instead of a tie it’s open at the neck, unbuttoned a couple of buttons, and tucked into crisp navy suit pants. The sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing off powerful forearms. He looks like a man who’s done with business for the night, undressing in stages.

Playing on an instinct, Shane intentionally under-dressed tonight. He’s not schlubby, but his dark jeans and a wrinkled flannel make him look young, relative to the meticulous creases of Ryan’s carefully-pressed slacks. The overall effect unbalances things between them before a word is said.

“And get this guy another of whatever he’s got,” Ryan tells the bartender. He pulls out his wallet and flicks a fifty on the table like it’s nothing.

“Hey, thanks, but you don’t have to—” Shane starts.

“I know,” Ryan says, cutting him off. It’s a different Ricky than he’s used to. Coldly amused, but not outright cruel, at least not yet. It’s how some men talk to women, Shane knows, when they want something. “You look like you could use it.”

“Long day,” Shane says. “I’m in town for a conference. You?”

“Work,” Ryan says. Short and sweet.

“What do you do?”

Ryan leans his elbow on the bar and turns to look at Shane full-on for the first time. “I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”

Ryan’s lips purse a little—he’s pleased with himself over that one, he’s going to crow about it later, Shane can tell. Ryan brings his glass up to his mouth to conceal the little break.

“Oh come on, you can’t say a thing like that and not tell. Assassin,” Shane guesses. “FBI agent.”

“Don’t bother, I’m not going to tell you. My business is my business.” The smile’s gone as quickly as it appeared. Ryan throws his glass back for another long swig, and Shane watches his throat undulate as he swallows.

“Mob lawyer. Russian spy.”

Ryan raises an eyebrow at him. “Nyet.”

“Geez, sorry I asked.” Shane goes to turn away.

“Hey, is that any way to talk to a guy who bought you a drink?” Ryan asks. “You should at least stick around and keep me company while you finish it.”

“Sorry,” Shane says, genuinely off-kilter for a moment before he sees where Ryan’s going with this. It’s another tried-and-true maneuver of manipulative assholes everywhere: reciprocity. Do something nice, unsolicited, and make them owe you. He wonders if Ryan read _The Game_ as part of his research for this night.

He has this uncomfortable feeling that maybe Ryan already read _The Game_, years ago, in another phase of his life, when he was an uncertain boy still figuring out how to become a decent man and not always getting it right.

For a split second only, Shane wants to call the whole thing off. He wants to lean in and kiss Ryan on the mouth, soft and sweet, and have Ryan react the way _Ryan_ would: with a stammering laugh, maybe a reflexive insult to cover his own surprise.

Then Ryan’s hand lands heavy on Shane’s shoulder, chasing the impulse away, and Shane’s back in it.

“Um,” he says, playing at reluctance. “Yeah, okay, I guess.”

“I’m Ricky,” Ryan says, holding out his other hand.

“Shane,” Shane says, taking it. It surprises him, and he can tell from the little flinch that it surprises Ryan too. He’d been planning to go with a fake name. “Pleasure to meet you,” he says, lobbing a softball over the plate for Ryan.

“Pleasure’s all mine,” Ryan says, knocking it to the cheap seats. “Believe it.”

Despite the cliché, or perhaps because of it, a chill goes all the way up Shane’s spine. It settles at the back of his neck like someone’s eyes on him.

Ryan grasps Shane’s hand a little too long, holding it there in the handshake with a firm grip.

Shane pulls away to finish his drink. “Well, thanks, this was—I’d probably better head up. Early flight tomorrow, so.”

Ryan cocks his head. “Gonna hit the hay?” he asks, drawling and disdainful. “You’ve got a real hot date with a Corona and an episode of Property Brothers that just can’t wait? I thought you looked like a fun guy, but I guess I was wrong.”

Shane knows negging when he hears it. It occurs to him that Ryan isn’t playing Ricky like a mob guy or a garden-variety crook. He’s playing him like that truest of psychopaths, a Fortune 500 CEO: two parts entitlement, one part brutal narcissism. Someone for whom consent isn’t interesting, or even essential: it’s just the end-point of a negotiation, and all negotiations are a game.

Shane pivots on his stool, making to leave. Ryan’s up quick as a snake to block his exit, standing close. He puts his hands on either of Shane’s knees and pushes them apart so he can stand ever-so-slightly between them. It makes Shane dizzy, how fast his body goes from curious to painfully turned on, and he has to lean back against the bar and mask his shudder.

Ryan notices. Shane can tell because he teeters back, gripping Shane’s knees harder not to prove a point but out of an actual need to support himself.

“I can be fun,” Shane says. He puts a little mustard on it, feigning hurt, as if he’s desperate to prove he’s not just some dull average-looking Midwestern guy at a bar too fancy for him.

Ryan opens his mouth. He closes it. When he opens it again, Shane gives it fifty-fifty odds that their agreed-upon safeword will come tumbling out of his mouth (“choo choo pickle pie”). Shane always half-expected that Ryan would bow out the moment the boners went from hypothetical to clear and present.

“Don’t go to your room,” Ryan says, instead of bailing. “Come up to mine. Show me how fun you can be.”

“I don’t _know_ you,” Shane protests. He’s getting that panicky, electric feeling again. Danger, high voltage, touch at your peril. “Like five minutes ago you obliquely threatened to kill me. I don’t think Ricky’s even your real name.”

Ryan waves it away. “That makes it better.”

*

And then—Shane still can’t believe it—they’re out of the bar, heading for the elevators. Ryan’s got three fingertips on his lower back, steering him.

These are the parts of Ryan’s performance as Ricky that Shane has always found the most convincing, and by convincing he means arousing. The dialogue’s always been ham-fisted, the characterization all over the place, but the physicality of it: that’s believable. Ricky is still and purposeful, in a way Ryan never is.

“Holy shit,” Ryan says, breaking character the moment the elevator doors close behind them. “Holy shit, dude, this is crazy. Holy shit.”

“Kind of,” Shane agrees. He has to smile at the way Ryan pulls his hand through his hair and then down to worry at his jawline.

“Sorry, I need a—like, uh. Uh. A quick T/O. I just need to freak out for the length of this elevator ride. Is this really—are we—”

“Looks like it.”

“You got a _boner_,” Ryan says, almost accusingly. And then, under his breath, like he’s surprised by it, “_I_ got a boner.”

“And here we are, mutually erect in an elevator,” Shane says, filing this away as good information to have. “I thought that was the point.”

“I just mean, like. I said a thing, and then I _did_ a thing, and then you got sprung so fast I could practically see little Tweety Birds orbiting your head.”

“Yeah,” Shane agrees. He can’t dispute it. He was there.

“I didn’t think it would work,” Ryan mutters, half to himself. “I thought I’d fuck it up, and you wouldn’t—that it wouldn’t be right.”

“No, you’re doing really good,” Shane says. “The Property Brothers burn, that was money. You should definitely say more mean things about various HGTV hosts.”

“My adrenaline is going crazy right now.” Ryan holds his hands out for Shane to see, and sure enough, they’re tremoring. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I’m probably—am I ruining this?”

“You’re not ruining anything.”

And he’s not, is the strange thing. Shane would have expected his interest to falter at the sight of Ryan pacing in front of him, having a panic-spiral in an elevator, but the temporary shattering of the Goldsworth illusion doesn’t seem to have negatively impacted his desire one bit. If anything he’s even more keyed up, absorbing Ryan’s nervous energy and giving it back.

“I promise I’m almost done,” Ryan says as the elevator dings for their floor. 

“You’re going to have to be. It’s not a very tall building.”

The elevator doors spring open and Ryan squares his shoulders. The nerves fall away; Shane actually watches it happen. Ryan’s posture improves, his face hardens, his mouth thins out. It’s like watching someone don a suit, and then endeavor to make their body live up to the promise of it.

“This is us,” he says, ushering Shane out of the elevator with that firm hand fit into the crevasse of his lower back. “Left.”

Shane turns left off the elevator and heads down the hallway. He’s conscious of the many times he has walked down hotel hallways with Ryan, bags in hand, exhausted after a long flight or a fruitless, grimy night of shooting. Context must truly be everything, because this feels totally foreign to him.

Ryan makes an abrupt stop in front of a door. Leaning against the wall and flashing Shane a grin—up, through eyelashes—that could only be described as devilish, he inserts his key card and props the door open for Shane to go in.

“Gentlemen first.”

“What, you’re not a gentleman?” Shane asks. He makes his way into the room, which is entirely dark. It puts him out-of-sorts again, off-balance, afraid to move around too freely lest he bump into something.

“Consider yourself warned.”

Ryan, who of course knows the layout of the room already, slides around him to flick on one of the bedside lamps and bathe the room in a soft, weak light.

“Your room’s nicer than mine,” Shane says. It’s a suite, which they did not discuss in advance. Shane can’t figure out if Ryan’s trying to make an occasion out of this or if he just thought it would enhance the aesthetic experience.

“I paid a lot more for mine than you did, so it better be,” is Ryan’s comeback for that. He’s taking his shoes and socks off, lining them up carefully against the wall. Shane’s getting some strong Patrick Bateman vibes from this iteration of the character.

They’re approaching the moment. The do-or-die moment, the turn-back-now-or-forever-hold-your-peace moment. The one where one or the other of them will have to initiate or they’ll just be standing here awkwardly in a hotel room staring at each other, afraid.  
  
Shane dumps his wallet and keys on the dresser, looking for something to keep his hands busy. He can think of better things to be doing with them, but he wants Ryan to _make him_.

Ryan starts to unbutton his crisp white shirt. He’s got a white V-neck on as an undershirt, and Shane watches with interest as Ryan’s hands make the slow processional down his torso. He peels the shirt off his shoulders and hangs it up before starting in on his belt.

“What are you—”

Ryan snorts. “Spare me the stammering objections, Shawn. You knew what this was the moment I bought you a drink, so don’t try to tell me you’re not that kind of girl.”

“…it’s Shane, actually.”

Ryan waves him off, like it matters not at all. “Whatever. Come over here and give me a reason to remember your name, if you care so much.”

He takes his other hand off his belt buckle and spreads his arms wide, inviting. When Shane hesitates, Ryan snaps his fingers and points to a spot at his side, like Shane’s a dog he’s trying to bring to heel.

Shane’s throat goes dry. He moves without meaning to, propelled forward by a need he still can’t identify or name even as he feels it putting one of his feet in front of the other to put him at Ryan’s side. He only knows he can’t leave the order dangling there for anyone to find.

Ryan’s arms are out again, making room. Shane goes for his belt buckle, pulling the belt slowly from his pant loops. He goes to throw it on the floor, but Ryan reaches out whip-fast to grab his wrist.

“That costs more than everything currently on and in your body is worth, including your organs,” Ryan snaps. “Put it on the dresser neatly or I’ll use it on you.”

Shane’s not sure what to make of this, the possibility that Ryan—that _Ricky_—might hurt him. About a week ago, Shane had emailed him a list (short) of the things he wouldn’t be okay with, and a second list (long) of all the stuff he’d be into. Pain, real pain, hadn’t been on either list—a murky in-between zone that Shane has no experience with in a sexual context and therefore no idea how he feels about it.

He’s not quite ready to call Ryan’s bluff and find out, so he winds up the belt carefully, sets it on the dresser, and returns to the task at hand.

Ryan’s stomach muscles clench and flex against his shaking hand as he undoes the button at the fly and pulls the zip down. He tugs Ryan’s pants and underwear down in one fell swoop, so they puddle to the floor. Ryan pulls his undershirt up and over his own head, so he’s standing there in—as Shane’s terrified inner-monologuing 1940s Midwestern newscaster would say—his altogether.

Shane exhales. Ryan’s hard. He’s _hard_. He’d said it in the elevator, but Shane still needed to see it with his own eyes, proof that Ryan’s getting off on this too.

Before Shane can reach out to touch him—he wants to run his finger along the vein, base to tip and around and back down—Ryan is settling himself onto the bed, sitting up with his back against the substantial headboard, legs spread.

“What do you need, a formal invitation? Make me come already.”

Shane hurries to comply, strewing clothes around the hotel room in his haste to undress. He doesn’t worry about making it sexy, not that he would necessarily know how to do that if he wanted to. He’s done his fair share of waiting, and imagining, and what if-ing, and now he wants to do the thing. He wants to tear his own pants off like a human tornado, crawl onto the bed to kneel between Ryan’s spread thighs, and put his mouth on a damn dick.

To Ryan’s credit, he never once asked the question Shane knows he must be thinking, which is: _have you even done this before? _He hasn’t asked because it’s immaterial to what Shane wants now. Even if the answer was no—and it _is_ no—it won’t change anything.

In deference to this shared but unspoken understanding, Ryan lets him get the lay of the land, but barely. He keeps his hands to himself just long enough for Shane to run his mouth along the length of him, up that vein and around the tip. He lets Shane stretch his mouth around the head, testing for girth and taste and the feel on his tongue. But soon, very soon, Ryan’s hand finds the back of Shane’s neck and clamps down possessively.

“Enough fucking around,” he says, tugging the hair so Shane’s got to look up at him. “Get serious, or I’ll find somewhere else to put this.”

He reaches down to smack his dick against the hot flush of Shane’s cheek, a rebuke. Then he presses the head of his dick to Shane’s lips, tracing around them, rubbing pre-come around like lip balm.

Shane can’t help the surprised whine that spills out of him, or the way his hips stutter down to hump the bed. Ryan takes the opportunity of his open mouth to pull Shane back down, not all the way, just that much further than Shane’s prepared for, and holds him fast by the back of the neck until Shane’s throat flutters and convulses around him.

And, look: Shane knew what he was doing when he sent Ryan that video. He knew what he was getting himself into.

Breathing, he suddenly realizes, is overrated. It’s a thing humans do because they need air in order to live, but it’s not nearly as thrilling as suddenly _not_ breathing. It’s not as exciting as taking your friend’s dick until your eyes are streaming and you’re coughing saliva down your chin and he’s looking down at you, pupils blown wide with shock and need.

“Yeah,” Ryan breathes. “Better.” He pulls back, letting Shane get air again, pressing the head of his dick at an angle, tucking it into the soft hollow of the inside of Shane’s cheek. He reaches down to stroke his finger along Shane’s jaw, then over his cheek where it bulges out obscenely. Then he smacks Shane’s cheek three times with the flat of his fingertips—sharp enough to stimulate himself through the muscle and flesh, and so Shane feels it like a slap.

Even when he was watching it and getting off on it, equal parts horny and guilty, Shane had always assumed that all this porny stuff was merely show for the camera. Surely people didn’t do it because they enjoyed it, but rather because it looked good on film.

That’s not quite right, though. He realizes now that you do it to feel out of control and helpless, and to trust someone when you’re more vulnerable than you’ll ever be. The feeling of letting go like that, putting your trust in someone so completely, is a rush like he’s never experienced before.

“Nice,” Ryan says. He strokes his thumb again over the bulge in Shane’s cheek and then up to wipe away tear tracks from under his eyes, almost tenderly. Again he can detect the Ryan beneath the Ricky, and instead of destroying the illusion it makes it _better_. “Can you go again?”

Shane nods around his mouthful. He tastes salt from his own tears, and a trace of bitterness that can only be from Ryan.

Ryan grips the back of his head again, getting the hair in his fist to pull Shane down on him again. Shane’s glad he’s been lazier about cutting his hair lately. He splutters and coughs around Ryan as he goes down as far as he can, feeling his throat spasm at the intrusion.

Ryan groans at the feeling. He starts to fuck Shane’s mouth slow and steady, acclimating him. Every few strokes he goes deep, as deep as he can get, and holds himself there. It’s still not all the way, and Ryan reaches down again to stroke a line down Shane’s throat.

“Open,” he orders. Shane swallows around him obediently, reflexively, relaxing his throat and taking him deeper until his nose bumps against Ryan’s pelvis. “Yeah.”

Ryan must take this success as a sign to take things up a notch. He slides a finger in alongside his dick, hooking the corner of Shane’s mouth like a fish and pulling so he whines and jerks. He goes balls-deep again, holding Shane close by the back of his head so he can’t move away. Then, when he’s got Shane where he wants him, swallowing him to the hilt, he pinches Shane’s nose shut.

It takes perhaps five seconds for Shane to realize that his air’s been cut off entirely, blocked by Ryan’s dick and Ryan’s fingers and Ryan’s _everything_. Sirens go off in his brain, first a brief and temporary panic and then pure adrenaline. He gets tunnel vision; all he can see and taste and smell is Ryan, leaking down his throat and touching his face and demanding every ounce of his attention.

When it’s too much he gives the signal, tapping Ryan’s leg. Ryan releases his nose immediately, letting him tear away to take long gulping, desperate breaths before dragging him back a little too quickly to be comfortable.

Shane thought, imagining this, that he might slide outside himself. Instead to his surprise he feels startlingly _present. _Every touch is magnified. His skin is hot and pink. He can feel himself rubbing a wet spot onto the duvet, responding in kind whenever Ryan’s dick pulses in his mouth. He could come like this, easily, untouched, like a teenager having a wet dream.

Ryan notices.

“Eyes up, slut,” Ryan orders. Shane makes himself look up. “If you come before me, I’ll ruin your night. Tell me you understand.”

Ryan lets go of Shane’s neck. His dick slips out of Shane’s mouth, wet and shiny, so hard he must be close. He rubs the head over Shane’s cheek, his lips, spreading strings of saliva around to make a thorough mess of Shane’s face.

“I understand,” Shane says, canting his hips off the bed. He ruts down fruitlessly, desperate to rub up against something. He’s shocked to hear himself; his voice comes out a ruined croak.

“You know,” Ryan says, shockingly casual for a person rubbing his dick all over his friend’s face, “for someone who doesn’t make a habit of sucking the cocks of strangers he meets in hotel bars, you’re not half bad. Use your tongue.”

He doesn’t let Shane say anything in response. He just slides back in, seeking the wet heat of Shane’s mouth, thrusting purposefully to rub the head of his dick against the ridges of his palate and the contours of his throat. When Shane gags, retching a little, he smiles.

Bearing Ryan’s order in mind, Shane makes an effort to run his tongue along the underside of Ryan’s dick, near the base. He finds that when the angle’s right, when he’s deep, he can get his tongue on Ryan’s balls. He’s rewarded by a low, soft curse from Ryan, _oh fuck, Shane_, that he knows isn’t anything close to acting.

“Gonna come, Shane, holy fuck,” Ryan mutters. “You can’t just, what the fuck.” The performance seems to have fallen away, pushed out of Ryan’s mind by the urgent need to come.

Unbelievably, they sort of forgot to talk about this. In the planning of it, the act itself had seemed secondary to the scene. Perhaps neither of them had really believed it would get this far.

With no plan in place, Ryan’s left to follow his instincts. He pulls Shane off him by the hair. He holds him there, hovering above the head of his dick, and starts to stroke himself. It doesn’t take much. One pump, two, three—and then Ryan’s shooting all over Shane’s mouth and cheek and chin, a groan ripped from him.

He’s still coming when he presses the head of his dick to Shane’s lips and back in, encouraging Shane to take him again. The last few spurts land on Shane’s tongue, down his throat, thick and bitter.

Ryan hasn’t asked it of him—he’s got his head thrown back, arm over his face like he’s too overwhelmed to look—but Shane keeps gently sucking and licking at Ryan’s softening cock, cleaning him up. It feels like if you’re going to do a job, you might as well do it thoroughly.

He’s so hard, he’s so close, he wants to come so badly. This is another thing they didn’t talk about. There had never been any conversation about Ryan touching him, only him touching Ryan. Shane doesn’t even know if it’s okay to bring himself off.

Shane reaches down to touch himself. He goes hard and fast, knowing it won’t take much.

“Hey,” Ryan says, harsh and grating and surprised. Shane’s heart sinks, waiting for the order to stop—Ricky would, the sadist—but it doesn’t come. “Hey,” he says again, softer.

Ryan wiggles down so he’s at Shane’s level, parallel. “Hey, no, let me, that was, holy shit, I can’t believe we just,” he babbles senselessly. He wipes a smear of come off Shane’s chin, and his other hand winds down without hesitation to knock Shane’s hand away and take its place.

“Oh, this angle’s weird,” he says, surprised, but he strokes awkwardly as fast as he can. “Shane, hey, that was, that was crazy, wow, come on, it’s okay.”

It doesn’t matter that it’s awkward, or that Ryan has obviously never touched another dick in his life, or that he seems hell-bent on expressing himself exclusively in stream-of-consciousness format from here on out. It certainly doesn’t matter that the central premise of this scenario, having served its purpose, has been all but abandoned.

There’s no trace of Ricky here, and Shane’s heart swells with it. He’s starting to get an inkling of a hunch that maybe, just maybe, he didn’t want Ricky Goldsworth after all.

“Ryan,” Shane chokes out, trying to warn him that he’s about to come. Ryan cranes up to kiss him, apparently uncaring that he’s kissing his own come off Shane’s lips, licking the taste off his tongue.

“Come _on_,” he mutters against Shane’s mouth, a final command for the road, and then he says the one thing Ricky Goldsworth would never say: “Shane, please.”

Shane obeys this order as he has all the others. He thrusts through the hot, slick vice of Ryan’s hand one last frantic time before coming across Ryan’s knuckles and hand and his own lower belly.

Ryan lingers, feeling around the tip. He takes the time to explore now that he didn’t have before, swirling an experimental pointer finger around the sensitive underside of the head. Shane shudders and jerks through the vestigial remnants of his orgasm, his whole body over-sensitive and his whole heart tender and laid bare. Between the two sensations, he feels done in.

Having satisfied his curiosity, Ryan flops over and wipes his hand on the duvet.

They breathe together in silence for a long moment.

“The pleasure’s all mine, _believe it_,” Shane mimics, low and gravelly. “The most…the most unbelievable horseshit.”

Ryan giggles. “You practically creamed your pants about it, though.”

“Every iteration of Ricky Goldsworth talks like a B-movie villain as written by Michael Bay. I’m so embarrassed.”

Ryan rolls over onto his side to face Shane again. “Man, you’re—Jesus. You’ve got jizz in your _eyebrow_.” He sounds a little awed. “I can’t believe I…I can’t believe we did that.”

“Believe it, baby!” Shane says, wiping halfheartedly at his face. He knows he’s being deliberately flip because he, too, cannot believe it. “It’s 2019! If you’re not having freaky sex with your friends in fancy hotel rooms, what’re ya doin’?”

“Are you, like, okay?” Ryan asks. His eyebrows are all knit together, the picture of concern. “Do you need water? Want me to run a bath or order room service or something?”

Shane quirks his eyebrow. He’s shooting for skeptical, but he senses that the come drying on his face, the swollen mouth, and the red-rimmed eyes probably dim the effect a bit.

“Ryan, I performed fellatio, I didn’t get an incurable wasting disease.”

“I read that I’m supposed to—that you might need, like.” Ryan makes a face and a vague gesture with his hand. “Just…it’s a lot. You couldn’t _breathe_.”

“Obviously what we’ve learned today is that breathing is overrated.”

“Oh, that’s what we’ve learned.”

Shane breathes in, calming the last fluttering nervous butterflies. It’s fine. They’re going to be fine. “I could use a washcloth for this whole situation,” he says, gesturing to his face and then down. “Maybe a glass of water.”

As Ryan heads to the bathroom, Shane considers Ryan’s comment. He’s oddly touched that Ryan spent so much time thinking about how to do this right. He always knew Ryan to be research-oriented, determined to go into things knowing what to expect and what’s expected of him, but he’s still pleased.

He closes his eyes, only to rest them for a moment.

*

** _Ricky Goldsworth is six feet under. _ **

He wakes up when Ryan drops a wet washcloth on his face.

“Hnnnghf!” Shane sits bolt upright, clutching at the washcloth.

“You fell asleep,” Ryan says. He’s in sweats and a t-shirt, perched on the side of the bed. His hair’s wet, suggesting he showered. “You fell asleep with come on your face, and now you look like a glazed doughnut.”

Shane twists to look at the clock by the bed. It’s nearly one in the morning. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

“I just did.”

Shane scrubs at his face with the washcloth. When he’s done he feels bright red and vulnerable, like he’s exposed brand new skin underneath the old. He’s covered by the duvet—Ryan must have thrown it over him—but he wants to find his boxers and put them on anyway. In his haste to remove them he might have strewn them anywhere.

“Yeah, but I mean. You’ve been awake this whole time?” Somehow it makes his heart ache, to think that after sharing such a crazy experience he left Ryan to putter around by himself in the dark of an unfamiliar hotel room.

Ryan shrugs. He’s got that look about him, teetering and uncertain, as though he’s got something he wants to say and isn’t sure how to say it.

He scratches at his jaw. “Yeah, I watched Property Brothers, funny enough. Hey, can we…like.”

Shane waits. Sometimes that’s the key with Ryan; you’ve got to wait him out, and let the silence do the work until it breaks him.

Ryan sighs. “I don’t think I like Ricky Goldsworth very much.”

“Oh,” Shane says. His heart sinks, because to him it sounds a lot like _I didn’t like this very much_. And he’d been expecting that, it’s not like he had any real hopes of a repeat performance, but it still hurts to hear. “Well. We knew that might happen, so I’m not holding you to it. I’m not…I hope you don’t regret it.”

Ryan’s eyes go wide. “No! God, I didn’t mean. Not…it’s not you, you were—great. It’s not even me. It’s _him_.”

“Okay.” Shane’s not sure what that means, exactly.

“There’s just no version of him that I feel okay being in for that long, not for…not for this.” Ryan shrugs, one-shouldered, uncomfortable. “And I’ve tried a lot of versions, and they all make my skin crawl. I know that you want him, but I don’t think I can be him, so that—that sucks.”

It takes a long moment for Ryan’s words to fully register. In Shane’s defense, he was quite soundly asleep barely a minute ago, so it takes time for him to process the terms of Ryan’s rejection.

“So what if—just hypothetically—I didn’t want him?” Shane finally ventures.

Ryan blinks at him owlishly from behind his glasses. “What do you mean?”

“I mean I’m pretty sure you can be a bossy, demanding piece of shit all on your own.”

A shadow of a smile alights on Ryan’s face. He tamps it down. “Don’t get me wrong, this was a blast, but I’m not sure I can do this as a full-time thing. The, like, the choking, the rough stuff, it’s—for me it’ll only ever be a sometimes food.”

“You’re saying you’re a lover, not a fighter?” Shane takes him in, the shape of him hunched over himself on the bed. This is all wildly, radically new for both of them, and there’s a lot to lose, and he wants to go easy. He’s got to get it right. “I spent like fifteen years of my life exclusively having low-key, loving sex. I’m not going to stop wanting that because occasionally I get a hankering for somebody to trash this place like it’s a rental.” 

Ryan grins for real. “A _hankering_? Dude.”

“Shut up,” Shane says reflexively. “I’m trying to say something here. I’m…I think Ricky was only ever the inciting incident. The, like, the _oh shit_ moment. I didn’t really care about him, I liked that you were _you_ being him. He just got my attention. He grabbed my chin and made me look at you.”

“Yeah he did,” Ryan snickers. “I mean, I want—you should be sure. Don’t make promises you can’t keep, is all.”

“Ryan,” Shane says, solemn. He reaches out to the empty space of the bed between them, patting it for emphasis. He’d be tapping Ryan on the shoulder if he were within arm’s length. “Hey. Hey, Ryan. I can handle you at your Ryanest. I _want_ to. Please let me try.”

Ryan makes a face at that, like it’s a level of emotional vulnerability he wasn’t quite prepared for. But his cheeks are pink, so Shane knows that he likes it, even if he won’t say so.

“And maybe,” Shane goes on, to keep things light, “Maybe every once in a while you can turn me into a human disaster zone, if you want. We’ll play it by ear.”

“I guess it was pretty fun.”

Shane snorts. “You were a natural. You called me _Shawn_.”

Ryan laughs again, but then it trails off into another extended silence. Shane senses that the tide has turned. Ryan gave Shane what Shane needed, and now it’s his turn to need something. Shane’s made a whole career of being attuned to Ryan’s body in dark close spaces, and he doesn’t need better lighting to be able to feel Ryan subconsciously leaning toward him now.

“C’mere,” he says, holding out his arms, and Ryan scurries across the bed to him. “Fair warning, I’m not wearing anything.”

“I think we’re well past that,” Ryan says. He tumbles into Shane’s side, bumping along awkwardly in the dimness, pressing his mouth to Shane’s for a soft, brief kiss. 

“Hey, man,” Shane says, just as soft: a simple greeting. Ryan comes back for more, something a little more thorough. Shane opens his mouth and Ryan lets out a muffled sound of satisfaction, breathing it past Shane’s lips along with his tongue.

Shane runs his hands up Ryan’s back, his arms, pulling him in close with an elbow hooked around him. His hands come up to frame Ryan’s face, holding him there to be kissed, gentle as anything. It’s a balm for them both after the rough strangeness of before, and Shane’s relieved to find that he wasn’t wrong: he likes this just as much. That had felt right, but this feels right too.

He’s getting hard again. He knows Ryan can feel it too, pressed as close as he is, nothing but the thin duvet between them. Shane takes the risk and winds his hands down to cup around Ryan’s ass, tucking him in between Shane’s thighs.

“Fuck,” Ryan exhales. His whole body shivers against Shane’s, striving closer still. Yeah, this’ll work. This’ll do nicely.

“Yeah,” Shane says out loud, encouraging. He kisses Ryan’s shoulder, the base of his neck, because they’re the closest parts of him and it’s so, so easy.

“_Loving sex_, huh,” Ryan says. “We gonna _make love_ now? Is that what’s about to go down?”

“If you want,” Shane agrees.

“Gross,” Ryan says happily. “Ricky Goldsworth would never.”

“Ricky Goldsworth is dead,” Shane tells him, shoving his hand unceremoniously down Ryan’s sweats. “Long live Ryan Bergara.”

*


End file.
